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FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 

AND 

NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 



French Philosophers 



and 



New-England Transcendentalism 



WALTER L. LEIGHTON 
If 



A THESIS 

SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 



&nitoer£itp of Virginia 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA 
1908 



„ni> 






SHntbfrstttf $ress: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



A 



To 
C. W. K. 



WHO HAS GIVEN ME BOTH THE ENCOURAGEMENT 

AND OPPORTUNITY FOR THE WRITING 

OF THIS THESIS 



PREFACE 



THE writings of the Transcendentalists of New England have 
been from youth of especial interest to me. An investi- 
gation of the phenomena of New-England Transcendentalism was 
instigated by a reading of the chapter on Transcendentalism in 
Professor Barrett Wendell's Literary History of America. The 
idea of making a specialty of the French influence in its relation 
to New-England Transcendentalism as a subject for a doctorate 
thesis was intimated to me by Professor LeB. R. Briggs, Dean of 
the Harvard University faculty. 

Thanks for assistance in the course of actually drawing up the 
dissertation are due — first, to Dr. Albert Lefevre, professor of 
philosophy at the University of Virginia, for valuable suggestions 
concerning the definition of Transcendentalism ; next, to Dr. R. H. 
Wilson and adjunct-professor Dr. E. P. Dargan, of the depart- 
ment of Romance Languages at the University of Virginia, for 
kind help in the work of revision and correction , and, finally, 
to Dr. Charles W. Kent, professor at the head of the department 
of English at the University of Virginia, for general supervision of 
my work on the thesis. 

In the work of compiling and writing the thesis I have been 
swayed by two motives : first, the purpose to gather by careful 
research and investigation certain definite facts concerning the 
French philosophers and the Transcendental movement in New 
England ; and, secondly, the desire to set forth the information 
amassed in a cursory and readable style. 

W. L. L. 

April 15, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

i 

INTRODUCTION 

Page 

1. Definition of Transcendentalism 1 

2. Miscellaneous Precursors of the New-England Move- 

ment 5 

3. Beginnings in New England 14 

II 

FRENCH EXPOSITORS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

1. Transmission of Transcendentalism into France . . 23 

2. Victor Cousin 27 

3. Theodore Jouffroy 39 

4. Transcendentalism in French Dress ...... 53 

III 

RELATION OF NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISTS 
TO FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 

1. George Ripley- — Translations . 60 

2. Margaret Fuller — The Dial 61 

3. A. B. Alcott — " Orphic Sayings " 75 

4. R. W. Emerson — Poet and Seer 79 

5. Brook Farm — Fourier Experiment 86 

IV 
CONCLUSION 

General Significance of French Influence on New- 
England Transcendentalism 92 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 101 



French Philosophers and 
New-England Transcendentalism 

I. INTRODUCTION 

1. Definition of Transcendentalism 

TT has been said that when an Englishman has a particular 
**■ matter to investigate he ventures first to the place of his sub- 
ject; makes researches and takes notes there for two years; and 
then, returning to England, draws up a cursory account of it all in 
two weeks. The Frenchman journeys to the vicinity of his subject ; 
pursues researches there for about two weeks; and then, return- 
ing to France, spends two years in writing up a gracious essay. 
And the German, when he has a matter for investigation, retires 
forthwith into his sanctum, isolates himself there for days and 
days, and gradually evolves in the course of time out of his inner 
consciousness a prolix dissertation. 

However trifling this intimation may be in view of such scientific 
investigations as have been carried on in England by Charles Dar- 
win, in France by Ernest Renan regarding the Bible, and in Ger- 
many by Friedrich Wolf concerning the Homeric question, — the 
fact remains that Kant, the German metaphysician, has succeeded 
in framing one of the most abstract and at the same time most 
lucid and final definitions as yet made of Transcendentalism, and 
has framed it, too, as it were, largely out of his inner consciousness. 

The acutely rational Transcendentalphilosophie of Kant deals 
with the sources and scope of knowledge. 1 He would have us un- 
derstand by transcendental knowledge, theoretical knowledge 
about the necessary principles of all knowledge. Our knowledge 
about the world of experience, he tells us — in defining transcen- 

1 Cf . Immanuel Kant, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Frommann's Klassiker der 
Philosophy. 



2 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

dental knowledge — is necessarily founded upon a priori princi- 
ples. A priori, for Kant, is knowledge in advance of all experience, 
that is, knowledge of the content of any of the concepts or prin- 
ciples of thought ; and the necessary principles of attaining knowl- 
edge are themselves a priori, transcendent of experience. 

Kant, the critic of pure reason, however, carefully discriminates 
between transcendent and Transcendental. The term transcendent 
applies to whatever lies beyond the realm of knowledge and ex- 
perience. The extension of concepts, valid within experience, to 
what is beyond experience — for instance, with reference to God — 
is a transcendent use of concepts ; this transcendent use is, accord- 
ing to Kant and later precise philosophers, illegitimate, and has 
a bad sense. The term Transcendental, on the contrary, has in 
the philosophy of punctilious Kant a good sense: it is explicitly 
applied to the a priori and necessary factors in experience, not 
extending beyond experience but only beyond empirically given 
facts of experience. The term transcendent in the bad sense — 
after the manner of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages — is op- 
posed, moreover, to the modern principle of divine immanency. 1 
But Kant distinctly refutes this transcendent in the sense of the 
Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and would have his Transcen- 
dental principles construed in an immanent sense, that is as 
remaining within the limits of experience. Pantheism, which 
incarnates the immanency theory, is akin in certain respects to the 
Transcendentalism of Kant ; both philosophies hold to the presence 
of God in the universe. 

There are, to be sure, in the history of philosophy, a variety of 
conceptions of Transcendentalism. The definitions are not es- 
pecially important, but they help us nevertheless in a way to get 
down to the matter at hand. Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) held for 
instance as Transcendental that which in the "transcendent" 
sense extended beyond the bounds of human experience. F. W. 
von Schelling (1775-1854) comprehended as Transcendental, in 
the modern meaning of the word, that which explains matter and 
all that is objective as the product of mind. 2 Coleridge (1772- 
1834) tells us in his imaginative literary way that the German 

1 Cf. The philosophy of Hegel. 

3 Cf . The philosophy of Bishop Berkeley. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 3 

Mystics and Transcendentalists — particularly Behmen and Schel- 
ling — "contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me 
an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the 
products of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were 
as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet 
to be propelled, from some root to which I had not penetrated, if 
they were to afford my soul either food or shelter." Ralph Waldo 
Emerson (1803-1882) states in a distinctly nineteenth century vein 
that " mankind have ever been divided into two sects, Materialists 
and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second 
on consciousness. . . . Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive 
thought is properly called at the present day Transcendental." 
And W. H. Channing, of our own time, writes after the manner of 
Emerson, — "Amidst materialists, zealots, and skeptics, the 
Transcendentalist believed in perpetual inspiration, the miracu- 
lous power of will, and a birthright to universal good. He sought 
to hold communion face to face with the unnameable spirit of his 
spirit, and gave himself up to the embrace of nature's beautiful 
joy, as a babe seeks the breast of a mother." 

Modern philosophers and men of letters — such as Schelling, 
Coleridge, and the New-England Transcendentalists — have been, 
it is clear, whether consciously so or not, decidedly instrumental 
in blurring and abolishing the acute Kantian distinction of the 
latter eighteenth century between " transcendent " and Transcen- 
dentalism. As a consequence, Transcendentalism — or Nativism 
— is at the present time widely in vogue in a loose sense as the 
generic term for various theories which advocate that this or that 
is a priori, — native, inherent, constitutional ; it is employed to 
designate the philosophy of such men of letters as Wordsworth, 
the philosophy of innate ideas and intuition. Empiricism, on the 
other hand, may be regarded at present as the generic term widely 
in vogue for divers theories which attribute the origin of all our 
knowledge to experience a posteriori; it is employed to designate 
the philosophy of such modern scientists as Ernst Haeckel, the 
philosophy of sensationalism and materialism. 

To understand better the philosophy of Transcendentalism, let 
us examine briefly the philosophy of Empiricism — the other 
extreme of philosophic thought as opposed to Transcendentalism. 



4 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

To the doctrine which admits of nothing as true except what is 
the result of experience, rejecting all a priori knowledge, the 
term Empiricism is applied. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) gives 
us in the following resolutions, which he drew up for himself 
as a kind of philosophical code, the viewpoint of the Empiricist : 
" Le premier — de ne recevoir jamais aucune chose pour vraie 
que je ne la connusse evidemment etre telle; c'est-a-dire d'eviter 
soigneusement la precipitation et la prevention, et de ne comprendre 
rien de plus en mes jugements que ce qui se presenterait si claire- 
ment et si distinctement a mon esprit, que je n'eusse aucune occa- 
sion de le mettre en doute. Le second, de diviser chacune des 
difficultes que j'examinerais en autant de parcelles qu'il se pour- 
rait et qu'il serait requis pour les mieux resoudre. Le troisieme, 
de conduire par ordre mes pensees en commencant par les objets 
les plus simples, et les plus aises a connaitre, pour monter peu a 
peu comme par degres jusques a la connaissance des plus composes, 
et supposant meme de l'ordre entre ceux qui ne se precedent point 
naturellement les uns les autres. Et le dernier, de faire partout 
des denombrements si entiers et des revues si generates, que je 
fusse assure de ne rien omettre." 1 

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the first in England to formu- 
late the doctrine of Empiricism; he argued that knowledge is the 
fruit of experience ; regarded himself simply as the servant and in- 
terpreter of nature ; and was the creator of practical and scientific 
induction. But John Locke (1632-1704) is, one may say, the most 
flat-footed of all the exponents of Empiricism. He tells us, — " All 
ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the 
mind to be white paper void of all characters, without any ideas, 
how comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store 
which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with 
an almost endless variety. Whence has it all the materials of rea- 
son and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from ex- 
perience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it 
ultimatelv derives itself." 

Failure to understand from the beginning the difference between 
Empiricism and Transcendentalism may breed confusion. A brief 
comparison of the two kinds of philosophy may then, as a final 
word, be illuminating. 

1 Discours de la methode, 1637. Rene Descartes. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 5 

Transcendentalism, at the present time, in a general sense, is 
the doctrine that man has a knowledge of philosophic principles 
by an immediate beholding without the process of reason or aid 
of experience. Empiricism, on the other hand, is in general the 
doctrine that all knowledge is derived through the senses from 
experiences. Empiricism tends to subordinate man to nature and 
experience for all his knowledge of life and eternity; Transcen- 
dentalism is disposed to subordinate nature and experience to man. 
Empiricism is objective ; Transcendentalism is subjective. Trans- 
cendentalism depending over-much upon intuition tends to be- 
come vague, visionary, fantastic; and Empiricism depending 
over-much upon sensation and experience tends to become ma- 
terialistic, matter-of-fact, mechanical. One might say that the 
ambiguous and extravagant utterances of so-called clairvoyants 
represent absurd phases of Transcendentalism ; and that the crude 
experiments and glittering generalities of pseudo-scientists denote 
absurd stages of Empiricism. 



2. Miscellaneous Precursors 

We believe to-day that all things are the result of evolution 
or transition; and in the light of this thought we are warranted 
in holding that the phenomena of New-England Transcendentalism 
are a result, no less than other things, of natural processes of 
change and development. 

In taking up the subject of the precursors of New-England 
Transcendentalism, however, we have to do with a complicated 
matter. It is, in truth, almost impossible to determine definite 
analogies, and to point to them explicitly as the precursors or 
sources of the Transcendentalists in New England. Almost all 
the writings of all times and countries have in all probability per- 
colated into English through translations, and have been more 
or less influential directly or indirectly on the writings of the New- 
England Transcendentalists. 

Certain preceding writers and writings, nevertheless, must have 
influenced more than others the votaries of New-England idealism 
whom we have under consideration. The New-England Tran- 



6 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

scendentalists themselves mention certain philosophers and poets 
as sources to which they are indebted for ideas and inspiration; 
certain critics, too, have discovered authors whom they aver to be 
in part antecedents of the movement; and, finally, from our own 
cursory acquaintance with world literature we may detect some- 
what distinct analogies between what the New-England Transcen- 
dentalists have thought and written and what has been thought 
and uttered by precursors with similar proclivities. 

In an early number of The Dial, Emerson asks how the age can 
be a bad one which gives him, among others, Plato, Plutarch, Saint 
Augustine, Donne, Sir Thomas Browne. In his essay on "Poetry 
and Imagination " we come across this sentence : " Socrates, the 
Indian teachers of the Maia, the Bibles of the nations, Shakespeare, 
Milton, Hafiz, Ossian, the Welsh Bards, — these all deal with nature 
and history as means and symbols, and not as ends." And Emer- 
son's friend and literary adviser, Mr. Cabot, sets forth the follow- 
ing factors among others as having been influential on the mind 
and character of his comrade: Plutarch, Saint Simon, Boederer, 
Bishop Berkeley, Coleridge, Goethe, Swedenborg, J. Bohme, Neo- 
Platonists, Hindu philosophy, — Bhagavat Gita, Upanishads, 
Puramas, Vedas, The Chaldean oracles, Hafiz, Enweri, S. Reid, 
Fichte, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Greek Mythology. 1 

Passing to Margaret Fuller, we find that in a letter dated June 
3, 1833, she writes : " I part with Plato with regret. . . . Eutyphon 
is excellent. 'T is the best specimen I have ever seen of that mode 
of convincing. . . . Crito I have read only once but like it. . . . The 
Apology I deem only remarkable for the noble tone of sentiment, 
and beautiful calmness." Mr. Frothingham, too, in his book on 
New-England Transcendentalism, 2 gives the following authors 
as among those who appealed to Margaret Fuller : Goethe, Novalis, 
Jean Paul Richter, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, Michael 
Angelo, Dr. Wilkinson the Swedenborgian, Fourier, Rousseau. 
In his volume, "Concord and Merrimac Rivers," Thoreau quotes 
among others from such varied authors as Hindu sages, George 
Herbert, and Milton. And, finally, a certain Mr. Johnson, in an 

1 Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Elliott Cabot, 2 vols., H., M. & Co., 
Cambridge, 1887. 

2 Transcendentalism in New England, O. B. Frothingham, Am. Unit. Assoc., 
Boston, 1903. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 7 

article entitled " Transcendentalism, " * writes of the authors in 
general who helped to promote the movement : " From Descartes 
and Spinoza it descended through Leibnitz and Kant, and their 
later interpreters, Cousin and Jouffroy. It was developed in various 
forms by Schelling, Hegel, and the higher German metaphysics, 
and formed an essential part of the English and Scotch philoso- 
phies of Cudworth, Reid, and Hamilton, of the idealism of Cole- 
ridge and of the moral intensity of Carlyle." 

Out of these specific references, and other general data, we can 
abstract at least six influences on the New England Transcen- 
dentalists which preponderate over the rest; these six sources of 
influence are of Hindu, Persian, Greek, German, English, and 
French origin. 

The fame of the literature and philosophy of the Hindu-Aryan 
people is not widespread. But scholars like Monier Williams and 
Max Miiller have determined upon and brought to light much 
interesting matter. The following is a suggestive list of the notable 
productions of the Hindus: the "Hymns of the Veda," the 
" Upanishad " and " Bhagavadgeta " writings, the "Law Books of 
Menu," and the "Hetopadesa" (or Book of Good Council). 

These writings of the Hindus tend, broadly speaking, to fix our 
attention on the Infinite and Eternal, on the regions which lie be- 
yond human ken, on the whence and the wherefore of all things. 
They stand for the subjugation of the senses, for a life of reason 
and moderation, and uphold as blissful a kind of super-conscious 
state, an at-one-ness in freedom and tranquillity with the Life of 
the Universe that ever has been and ever will be. Transcendental- 
ism, indeed, seems to have first manifested itself in pronounced 
yet quite mild form among the Hindus. 

In the "Kartha Upanishad" we find a passage quite character- 
istic of Hindu occultism, — "If the slayer thinks I slay, if the slain 
thinks I am slain, then both of them do not know well; it (the 
Soul) does not slay nor is it slain." 2 The lines bear a striking re- 
semblance to a stanza, which seems almost a paraphrase of the 
passage in the "Kartha Upanishad," — in one of Emerson's poems 
entitled "Brahma," — 

1 Transcendentalism, S. Johnson, Radical Review, Boston, Jan. 1, 1884. 

2 Bibliotheca India, Calcutta, 1852. 



8 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

"If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again." 1 

From the Persians, a numerous and important branch of the 
Iranian group of the Aryan stock, have sprung not a few of the 
world's scholars, philosophers, and poets, But of all kinds of 
literary expression, the country is most noteworthy for its Oriental 
poetry. And the chief figures of the Persian Parnassus according 
to one of our New-England Transcendentalists, are: Firdausi, 
Enweri, Nisami, Jelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Jami. 

One of the poems of Enweri, mystically symbolical of body and 
soul, has been rendered into English verse by Emerson : 

" A painter in China once painted a hall; 
Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall; 
One half from his brush with rich colors did run, 
The other he touched with a beam of the sun; 
So that all which delighted the eye in one side, 
The same, point for point, in the other replied. 
In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found; 
Thine the star-pointing-roof, and the base on the ground; 
Is one half depicted with colors less bright ? 
Beware that the counterpart blazes with life ! " 2 

The most celebrated philosophers of Greece were Hellenes, a 
branch of the same Indo-European race as the Hindus and Per- 
sians. They may be divided into two classes, — (1) the philoso- 
phers of nature, such as Heraclitus and Democritus ; and (2) the 
philosophers of nature and man, such as Socrates, Plato, and 
Aristotle. These philosophers, together with the Greek dramatists, 
were doubtless, in some measure, influential in their utterance on 
the Transcendentalists of New England. We make selections 
from the writings of one or two with a view to intimating their 
penchant toward Transcendentalism. 

Heraclitus (535-475 B. C), known among the ancients as the 

1 Poems, H., M. & Co., p. 170. 

' Body and Soul, Enweri, from Emerson's Persian Poetry. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 9 

obscure, or the weeping philosopher, but withal, broad of outlook, 
deep of insight, sane, writes : " There is properly no existence but 
only becoming, that is, a continual passing from one existence 
into another." In a similar strain Emerson says : " Power ceases 
the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of transition from 
a past to a present state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting 
to an aim." x 

Plato (427-347 B. C), a man of letters as well as idealistic 
philosopher of high order, the disciple of Socrates and the teacher 
of Aristotle, declares : " Through Love all the intercourses and 
converse of God with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried 
on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other 
wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar." 2 
We have to compare with this an analogous passage from Sylvester 
Judd, a New-England clergyman and novelist of idealistic ten- 
dencies, who lived and wrote during the flood-tide of Transcen- 
dentalism in New England : 

"Love is my food, my bed, 
And roof. Love is my wing, my impulsive love, 
And soul and circumstances, my joy and prayer. 
In love I dwell in God, and God in me. 
Not otherwise is seen the great Unseen." 3 

The dramatist Euripides, who embodies the spirit of his age, 
and depicts human nature as it is, appears now and then in a pas- 
sage to be a bit Transcendental : from Hippolytus, — 

"Try first thyself, and after call on God; 
For to the worker God himself lends aid." 

With this compare again certain lines from Emerson, — 

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." 

The character and genius of the Greeks have, in fact, exercised 
powerful influence on the life and thought of the civilized world. 
Out of crude beginnings they developed wonderful harmony of 

1 Self-Reliance, Essays, First Series, p. 45 ff., H., M. & Co., Cambridge, 1895. 
3 Symposium — Source Book of Greek Philosophy, C. M. Bakewell. 
8 Philo — An Evangeliad, 1850. 



10 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

body and mind. Belief in themselves, love of glory, freedom of 
religion, philosophical impulses, — all helped to mould their char- 
acter and determine the quality of their utterance. Their drama 
and philosophy, as well as their arts, are distinguished by depth, 
intellectual completeness, philosophical vividness. Without the 
Greek influence a deal that is Transcendental would never have 
come into being. 

Of all people, however, Oriental or Occidental, the Germans 
plunge deepest and soar highest in the realm of Transcendentalism. 
Their poets and philosophers look far back into the past and peer 
far forward into the future. They are subjective like the Hindus, 
rather than objective, as were in large measure the Greeks. But 
their subjectivity is creative, assertive, renascent. They become 
now and then, as it were, intoxicated by the vastness of their own 
conceptions, sublimated by the depth and vitality of their own 
imaginings. 

Kant (1724-1804), the critic of pure reason, would rivet our 
attention on two august facts : 

"The starry heavens above, 
And the moral law within." 

And both the sense and spirit of this couplet were familiar to the 
New-England Transcendentalists. James Freeman Clarke, one 
of the members of the Transcendentalist Club, in characteriz- 
ing his intimate friend, Theodore Parker, the noteworthy Unitarian 
preacher, writes in a similar strain : " He (Parker) belonged to 
that school of thinkers who are called Transcendentalists; who 
believe that man, as God's child, receives an inheritance of ideas 
from within; that he knows by insight; that he has intuitions of 
truth, which furnish the highest evidence of the reality of the soul 
of God, of Duty, of Immortality." x Hegel (1770-1831), after the 
manner of Heraclitus, declares that God is a process of becoming. 2 
And Fichte (1762-1814), by a superb convolution of his cranium, 
transfers the centre of the universe from wherever else to his own 
bosom : " This earth of ours with all its splendors which in your 

1 Memoirs, James Freeman Clarke. 

2 History as a Manifestation of Spirit, F. H. Hedge, translation from Hegel. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 11 

childish ignorance you fancied yourselves to be in need of; this 
sun of ours and the thousand times thousand suns which surround 
it ; all the earths which you divine about every one of these thousand 
times thousand suns : — this whole vast universe, the thought of 
which makes your soul tremble, is nothing but a faint reflexion of 
your own endless and forever progressing existence." And cer- 
tain lines in one of Emerson's essays have, we believe, a somewhat 
similar ring : " Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age ; 
requires infinite spaces and numbers to accomplish his design." ' 

Transcendentalism, in short, would not be what it is, by a wide 
margin, were it not for the Germans with their profound learning, 
subjective intensity, pantheistic spirituality. They are, for the 
most part, born optimists and idealists. They combine in them- 
selves, and raise to a high degree, the Transcendentalism of Hindu 
and Greek philosophy. 

In regard to the English, it is difficult to determine what to say. 
They constitute a kind of cross, in the realms of Transcendental 
philosophy, between the Greeks, Germans, and French — possess- 
ing certain merits here and lacking others there, and interfusing 
throughout all a poetical and philosophical vitality and exuberance 
all their own. The Elizabethan Age, the Puritan Age, and the 
Period of Romantic Revival constitute three important epochs in 
English Literature. And it is during two of these three eras that 
elements of Transcendentalism, in one form or another, seem now 
and then definitely to crop out. 

A passage from Milton's " Paradise Lost " is noteworthy for 
grasp of imagination and spiritual insight: 

"One Almighty is, from whom 
All things proceed, and up to Him return, 
If not depraved from good, created all 
Such to perfection ; one first matter all, 
Indued with various forms, various degrees 
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life ; 
But more refined, more spiritual and pure, 

As nearer to him placed or nearer tending 
Each in their several active spheres assigned, 

1 Essays, First Series, H., M. & Co., 1895, p. 61. 



12 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Till body up to spirit work, in bounds 
Proportion 'd to each kind. So from the root 
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves 
More aery, last the bright consummate flower 
Spirits odorous breathes; flowers and their fruit, 
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd, 
To intellectual." 

It is interesting to compare with this two passages from the writ- 
ings of New-England Transcendentalists. The first is from W. E. 
Channing, — " The voice of our whole nature, properly inter- 
preted, is a cry after a higher existence." ' And the other is from 
Emerson, — 

"The subtle chain of countless rings 

The next unto the farthest brings; 

The eye reads omens where it goes, 

And speaks all languages the rose; 

And striving to be man, the worm 

Mounts through the spires of form." 2 

Wordsworth, though, is doubtless the most truly Transcendental 
of any figure in English Literature. His scope of thought at its 
best is cosmic ; he has faith in an inner light ; he is sensitive to the 
presence and manifestation in all things of the Infinite and Eternal. 
We quote a characteristic passage from " Tintern Abbey," — 

"A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air 
And the blue sky, and the mind of man, — 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

And we have to compare with these lines a passage, somewhat 
analogous, from the writings of Thoreau, the friend and contem- 
porary of Emerson, and one of the most noteworthy of the lesser 
New-England idealists, — " Sometimes, in a Summer morning, 

1 Sermon, William Ellery Channing. 
3 Poems. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 13 

having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway 
from sunrise till noon, rapt in re very, amidst the pines and hick- 
ories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness. ... I 
grew in these seasons like corn in the night, ... I realized what 
the Orientals meant by contemplation and the forsaking of words. 
... If the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I 
should not have been found wanting." * 

If elements of Transcendentalism are faint in Persian, Greek, 
and English, they are — from one point of view — fainter still in 
French literature. The race which produced Moliere, Racine, 
Balzac, and Hugo has, to be sure, an order of genius of first water. 
But few will dispute that it is not easy to put one's finger upon 
what is Transcendental in it. The conditions which evolved such 
blase rationalists as La Rochefoucauld or Voltaire would hardly 
allow Transcendental views — after the order of Plato or Kant, 
Carlyle or Emerson — to be taken too seriously. 

But certain figures in French literature appear to manifest in 
some measure affinity for Transcendentalism. Mr. Frothingham 
and George Ripley in their volumes 2 appertaining to our subject 
enable us to compile the following list of French writers as having 
been more or less interested in the Transcendental in the course 
of their utterance : Cousin, Jouffroy, Fourier, Paul Janet on Plato, 
Saint Simon, Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire on Aristotle and Indian 
Philosophy, Bouillet on Plotinus, Ernile Saisset on Spinoza, Tissot 
and Barni on Kant, J. Simon and E. Vacherot on the Alexandrine 
School, Cabanis, Laromiguiere the successor of Cabanis, and 
Maine de Biran, who regards Will as the base of personality. 

The above heterogeneous catalogue as indicative of those in 
France, related to Transcendentalism in general or to New England 
Transcendentalism in particular, is for us, indeed, too inclusive. 
In our opinion — after a careful survey — the writers of France 
who were prime leaders of the Transcendental movement there 
and who have really exerted appreciable influence upon and mani- 
fested more or less distinct analogy to phases of New-England 
Transcendentalism, may properly be reduced to three, namely, — 

1 Walden, by H. D. Thoreau, H., M. & Co., Cambridge. 
3 (a) Transcendentalism in New England, by O. B. Frothingham; 
(b) Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, by G. Ripley. 



14 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Cousin, Jouffroy, and, in a way, the French Socialist Fourier. 
And yet it is with this French influence on New-England Tran- 
scendentalism, faint and slight as it is, that we are later in this 
dissertation to be especially concerned. 



3. Beginnings in New England 

About 1835, Amos Bronson Alcott, the Connecticut Pestalozzi, 
had achieved as an idealist and an educator quite wide re- 
nown. He was an earnest student of Plato and the Bible and a 
devoted admirer of Carlyle. A band of young men, among whom 
was F. H. Hedge, urged Alcott at this time to settle permanently 
in New England and assist them in editing a new magazine which 
was to be called The Transcendentalist. 1 Those most active along 
with F. H. Hedge in the enterprise were Dr. Channing, Miss 
Peabody, James Freeman Clarke, and George Ripley. The move- 
ment proved to be premature. But out of it grew the publication 
of The Dial and the name Transcendentalists. 

In his graceful and forcible history of New-England Transcen- 
dentalism, which we have mentioned before, Mr. Frothingham 
sketches for us what he deems to be the beginning of Transcen- 
dentalism in New England. He tells us, — " The circumstances 
which led to the formation of what was afterwards to be known 
as the Transcendental Club were these. After the public exer- 
cises of the Harvard University Centennial, 2 Sept. 8, 1836, it 
chanced that R. W. Emerson, George Ripley, F. H. Hedge, and 
George Putnam met in conversation on the unsatisfactory con- 
dition of Unitarian theology, and passed the afternoon in confer- 
ence in a room at " Wiilard's." The meeting was adjourned to 
meet at Mr. Ripley's in Boston the following week; and thence 
again, in the course of the same month, to Mr. Emerson's in Con- 
cord. On this occasion there was a much larger gathering, in 
eluding A. B. Alcott, C. A. Bartol, G. P. Bradford, C. A. Bronson, 
W. H. Channing, J. F. Clarke, J. S. Dwight, Convers Francis, 
Caleb Stetson, Margaret Fuller, and Miss E. P. Peabody. The 

1 Q. v. Alcott's Diary, March, 1835. 

2 Q. v. Emerson's Divinity School Address. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 15 

club thus formed, without rules or organization, continued to meet 
at irregular intervals, according to personal convenience. ..." 

Emerson, with his customary clear vision and sage modesty, 
gives us half humorously and half seriously in a few lines in his 
essay entitled " Life and Letters in New England " his version of 
the incipient stages of the Transcendental movement in New Eng- 
land : " Dr. Channing, 1 whilst he lived, was the star of the Ameri- 
can Church, and we then thought, if we do not still think, that he 
left no successor in the pulpit. He could never be reported, for 
his eye and voice could not be printed, and his discourses lose 
their best in losing them. . . . Dr. Channing took counsel in 1840 
with George Ripley, to the point whether it were possible to bring 
cultivated thoughtful people together and make society that 
deserved the name. He had earlier talked with Dr. John Collins 
Warren on the like purpose, who had admitted the wisdom of the 
design and undertook to aid him in making the experiment. Dr. 
Channing repaired to Dr. Warren's house on the appointed even- 
ing, with large thoughts which he wished to open. He found a 
well-chosen assembly of gentlemen variously distinguished ; there 
was mutual greeting and introduction, and they were chatting 
agreeably on different matters and drawing gently towards their 
great expectation, when a side-door opened, the whole company 
streamed in to an oyster supper, crowned by excellent wines ; and 
so ended the first attempt to establish aesthetic society in Boston." 

The term Transcendentalism, then, it may be inferred, grew 
out of the proposed establishment of a magazine which was to be 
called The Transcendentalist. It may be readily seen, too, that the 
Unitarian Movement was contemporaneous with the Transcen- 
dental Movement in New England; it is probable, indeed, that 
Unitarianism in New England helped in no small measure to bring 
Transcendentalism into bloom. There were three periods of 
Unitarianism: the first, 1815, led by Dr. W. E. Channing; the 
second, 1836, led by Theodore Parker; the third, 1860, led by 
Dr. T. H. Hedge. And these three, Channing, Parker, Hedge, 
were widely known as Transcendentalists as well as Unitarians. 
The year 1836, however, may be taken as the birth of the 

1 William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), Unitarian Clergyman. He became 
pastor of the Federal St. Church, Boston, in 1803. 



16 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

idealistic movement in New England under the name of Tran- 
scendentalism, with R. W. Emerson the leader of Transcen- 
dentalism, Theodore Parker the leader of Unitarianism, and both 
disciples of Dr. W. E. Channing, the chief exponent of the Liberal 
Movement in New England of the early nineteenth century. 

There was at the time of the beginnings of Transcendentalism 
in New England no definite system of philosophy or kind of organ- 
ization. The prime movers of the era would doubtless have been 
surprised at rumors disposed to group them as a school or sect, 
and assuredly they would have been nonplussed over being dubbed 
Transcendentalists, a name given nobody knows by whom, and 
applied nobody knows just when. 

The summer of 1839, writes W. H. Channing 1 in his " Memoirs," 
saw the full dawn of the Transcendental Movement in New Eng- 
land. " In part, it (the Transcendental Movement) was a reaction 
against Puritan Orthodoxy; in part, an effect of renewed study 
of the ancients, of Oriental Pantheists, of Plato and the Alexan- 
drines, of Plutarch's Morals, Seneca and Epictetus; in part, the 
natural product of the culture of the place and time. On the 
somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism, — whose dogma was 
trust in individual reason as correlative to Supreme Wisdom, — 
had been grafted German Idealism, as taught by masters of most 
various schools, — by Kant and Jacobi, Fichte and Novalis, 
Schelling and Hegel, Schleiermacher and De Wette, by Madame 
de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the result was a 
vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human 
spirit." 

The first evidence of the realization of what Transcendentalism 
means, and of the acceptance of the term Transcendentalism — 
with which their views were ascribed — by the Transcendentalists 
themselves, we come across in the January number, 1842, of The 
Dial. In a column entitled " Editor's Table " of this January 
issue of The Dial we find the following significant statement: 
" The more liberal thought of intelligent persons acquires a new 
name in each period or community ; and, in ours, by no very good 
luck, as it sometimes appears to us, has been designated as Tran- 
scendentalism. We have every day occasion to remark its perfect 
1 Nephew of the great preacher, W. E. Channing. 






NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 17 

identity, under whatever new phraseology or application to new 
facts, with the liberal thought of all men of a religious and con- 
templative habit in other times and countries." 

Certain periodicals, of which The Dial is the most important, 
helped to promote from the very beginning the movement of 
Transcendentalism in New England. For the Transcendental ists 
were critics, " come-outers," from the old; and the journal, the 
periodical, became for a time of greater worth to them and more 
popular with them than the printed pages of books. Among the 
leading journals which were organs and interpreters of the liberal 
thought in New England in its incipient and later stages were : 
(1) The Dial, first published in Boston in 1840 by Weeks, Jordon 
and Company, and edited at first by Margaret Fuller and R. W. 
Emerson, with G. Ripley, H. D. Thoreau, and James Munroe as 
assistant editors; (2) The Journal of Instruction, first published 
in Philadelphia in 1833 by H. H. Porter, and edited by Wm. Rus- 
sell, A. B. Alcott, and Professor W. R. Johnson; (3) The Christian 
Examiner, edited at first (about 1834) by Dr. James Walker, Pro- 
fessor at Harvard College, and edited later (about 1857) by Dr. 
F. H. Hedge; (4) The Plain Speaker, published in Providence 
about 1841 ; * (5) The Massachusetts Quarterly Review, published 
in Boston under the editorship of Theodore Parker; and (6) The 
Western Messenger, published at Cincinnati and Louisville, but 
circulated to a large extent throughout New England, — J. F. Clarke 
and W. H. Channing, two New-England clergymen of the Uni- * 
tarian faith, being the editors of The Western Messenger. 

Some of the contributions to The Dial, the most important organ 
of New-England Transcendentalism, shadow forth in plain relief 
the nature of Transcendentalism in its beginnings in New Eng- 
land, and enable us to determine in a degree how the wind was 
then blowing. In his third " Lecture on the Times," 2 in The 
Dial, January, 1843, Emerson says : " The first thing we have to 
say respecting what are called new views here in New England, at 
the present time, is that they are not new, but the very oldest of 
thoughts cast into mould of these new times. . . . The idealist, in 

1 See The Dial, July, 1841. 

2 The Transcendentalist, by R. W. Emerson, read at Masonic Temple in Boston 
in December, 1840 ; published in The Dial, Jan. no., 1843. 

2 



18 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

speaking of events, sees them as spirits. He does not deny the 
sensuous fact; by no means; but he will not see that alone. He 
does not deny the presence of this table, this chair, and the wall 
of this room, but he looks at these things as the reverse side of 
the tapestry, as the other end, each being a sequel of completion 
of a spiritual fact which merely concerns him. . . . The Tran- 
scendentalist adopts the whole connexion of spiritual doctrine. 
He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human 
mind to the new influx of light and power; he believes in in- 
spiration and in ecstasy." 

In a critical appreciation of a pamphlet * entitled " Transcenden- 
talism," the reviewer writes somewhat effusively in the The Dial 
(January, 1843) as follows : " Antecedent to all utterances, tran- 
scendent of all time, space, and motion, primal to spirit, originative 
of soul, creative to body; everlasting, eternal, illimitable; in- 
describable in any terms, these we use or other, — in the One, the 
Underived, the Unit — God. . . . Most inquirers have like Locke, 
limited themselves, and as far as they speculatively could, all 
humanity to the bounds of intellect, asserting, with him, that 
' the understanding is the highest faculty of the soul.' All who 
have ventured affirmations from the higher level have been saluted 
with epithets intended to be condemnatory, such as * fantastic,' 
' niystic,' ' theosopher,' and now, it seems, ' transcendentalism' . . . 
But the combination of a whole world of sensuous minds against one 
transcendental soul will not move him. He is not an opponent to 
them. He sees all they see; he admits all their facts on their 
ground, but this admission leaves untouched, unimpeached, that 
other and higher class of facts, and that reality in being, which the 
mere moral philosopher declares he knows not of, and the existence 
of which he stoutly denies." 

In an article entitled " Europe and European Books," 2 in the 
April, 1843, number of The Dial we discover the following passage 
apropos in particular of French writers : " Europe has lost weight 
lately. Our young men go thither in every ship, but not as in the 
golden days. . . . We remember when arriving in Paris, we 
crossed the river on a brilliant morning, and at the bookshop of 

1 Boston, Crocker and Ruggles, 1842. 

2 Anonymous. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 19 

Papinot in the Rue de Sorbonne, at the gate of the University, 
purchased for two sous a Programme which announced that every 
Monday we might attend the lecture of Dumas on Chemistry at 
noon ; at a half hour later either Villemain or Ampere on French 
Literature ; at other hours Guizot on Modern History ; Cousin on 
the Philosophy of Ancient History; . . . Prevost on Geology; 
. . . Jouffroy on the History of Modern Philosophy; . . . and 
Jouffroy on Greek Philosophy." 

Three other articles in early numbers of The Dial refer explicitly 
to French philosophers and their writings. In the first — a critical 
review of " Channing's Translation of Jouffroy " 1 — we find these 
lines : " M. Jouffroy has been for some time very favorably known 
to our public. Few if any living writers upon Ethical Philosophy 
stand so high in the estimation of those who have made this science 
a study as he does." In the second — a critical appreciation of 
" Professor Walker's Vindication of Philosophy " 2 — we come upon 
this passage : " Authors of the best systems of philosophy have 
been accused of atheism, decried as dangerous, and exposed to the 
attacks of popular clamor. Descartes was called an atheist; Locke 
was called an atheist; Kant was called an atheist; and recently, 
the eminent French Eclectic, Cousin, has been called an atheist; in 
the latter case with as much propriety as in the former, and not a 
whit more." And the third article, found in the book review de- 
partment of a later number of The Dial, relates to one of the 
translations of Cousin's Psychology : " When the following trans- 
lation of a portion of M. Cousin's lectures was first published, 3 it 
was not supposed another edition would be wanted. A small edi- 
tion, it was thought, might be disposed of among the few who 
took a special interest in philosophical studies. The work was, 
however, introduced into a number of our most respectable Uni- 
versities and Colleges ; 4 and the translator received repeated 
requests for a second edition, accompanied by very strong tes- 

1 The Dial, July, 1840. 

2 The Dial, October, 1840. 

3 Elements of Psychology, included in Critical Examination of Locke's Essay 
on the Human Understanding, with additional pieces by Victor Cousin, translated 
from French by Rev. C. S. Henry, D.D., N. Y., 1838. 

4 Prof. James Walker used it as a text-book with his classes at Harvard. Cf. 
Dr. Rand. 



20 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

timonials to the value of the work. ... He therefore determined 
some time ago to put out another edition. . . ." 

The early stages of Transcendentalism in New England were 
marked not only by numerous utterances in periodicals, like The 
Dial, with strongly idealistic trend, but as well by numerous 
philosophical and literary assemblies and divers communistic 
associations. 

The most distinguished literary association, known as the 
Transcendental Club, 1 and formed in the early enthusiastic days, 
we have previously mentioned. It was at first called the Symposium. 
The initial meeting of this particular organization was held Septem- 
ber 19, 1836, at the house of George Ripley, then a Unitarian 
minister in Boston. The next meeting was held at the house of 
A. Bronson Alcott, 26 Front Street, Boston. There were sixteen 
members, all of more or less pronounced Transcendental tendencies. 
Their names are as follows : 2 Con vers Francis, R. W. Emerson, 
A. B. Alcott, G. Ripley, F. H. Hedge, J. F. Clarke, C. A. Bartol, 
Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth P. Peabody, Theodore Parker, W. H. 
Channing, J. S. Dwight, Jones Very, H. D. Thoreau, R. Bartlett, 
Caleb Stetson. This group of men and women who met for the 
discussion of literature and philosophy constituted, as it were, 
from the beginning the storm-center of Transcendentalism in 
New England. 

Among the chief communistic societies organized during the 
flood-tide of Transcendentalism in New England were Brook Farm, 
established at West Roxbury (1841-1847), and the Fruitlands 
community, founded almost contemporary with Brook Farm, at 
Harvard, near the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Both these 
associations bear witness to the French influence, especially that of 
the French Socialist, Fourier. 

Most important of all the manifestations which accompanied 
the beginnings of Transcendentalism in New England for us, 
however, are the several translations of works of certain French 
philosophers which were neatly published in book form and 
widely circulated. George Ripley, in his " Specimens of Foreign 

1 The Transcendental Club, 1836-1850. 

2 For references see Memoirs of J. F. Clark, W. H. Channing, F. Sanborn; 
also G. W. Cooke on R. W. Emerson. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 21 

Standard Literature," * had published his translations of Cousin's 
" Melanges philosophiques " and Jouffroy's " Melanges philoso- 
phiques." W. H. Channing had published in two different 
editions 2 his translation of Jouffroy's "Introduction to Ethics." 
C. S. Henry had published in New York his translation of 
Cousin's " Elements of Psychology," 3 H. G. Linberg published 
in Boston in 1832 his version of Cousin's " Introduction of the 
History of Philosophy." J. C. Daniel translated in 1849 Cousin's 
" The Philosophy of the Beautiful." 4 The translation by O. W. 
Wight of Cousin's " History of Modern Philosophy" was pub- 
lished in New York, 1852. R. N. Toppan, in 1862, published a 
version of Jouffroy's " Moral Philosophy." 5 Besides the above 
seven there were two other somewhat unimportant publications, — 
Sarah Austin's translation of Cousin's " The State of Public 
Instruction in Prussia " ; 6 and Mary L. Booth's translation of 
Cousin's " Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu 
and Mazarin." 7 

In the preface to his translation, H. G. Linberg writes concerning 
Cousin a few words which are indicative of the temper of the time 
toward Cousin, the renowned French Eclectic philosopher : " It 
is well known that the lectures of M. Victor Cousin excite strong 
emotions of sympathy and approbation, and are listened to and 
read with that attention and respect which is the most satisfactory 
evidence of a powerful conviction of their rationality and truth by 
a very numerous class of intelligent and well informed young men 
who may be fairly considered to represent the flower of the rising 
generation in their respective countries . " 8 An d R . H . Toppan in the 
preface to his edition writes as follows about Jouffroy : " The 
following translation contains three extracts from the philosophical 
writings of Jouffroy, one of the most profound of the French 
philosophers of the nineteenth century and a pupil of the cele- 
brated Cousin." 9 

1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 

2 James Munroe & Co., Boston, 1848; and Specimens of Foreign Standard 
Literature, Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1840. 

3 Gould & Newman, N. Y., 1838. 

4 N. Y., 1849. 5 W. H. Tinson, N. Y., 1862. 
6 N. Y., 1839. 7 N. Y., 1859 

8 Introduction to the History of Philosophy, W. H. Tinson, N. Y., 1862. 

9 Moral Philosophy, W. H. Tinson, N. Y., 1862. 



22 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS 

Having given in a general way a definition of Transcendentalism, 
set forth a cursory sketch of miscellaneous precursors of the New- 
England movement, and outlined certain features which marked 
the beginnings of the Transcendental epoch in New England, we 
now come to the second part of our dissertation which comprises 
gathering together and setting forth some telling facts concerning 
the French Expositors of Transcendentalism. 



II. FRENCH EXPOSITORS OF TRAN- 
SCENDENTALISM 

1. Transmission of Transcendentalism into France 

FROM Descartes and Spinoza it (Transcendentalism) 
descended through Leibnitz and Kant, and their later 
interpreters, Cousin and Jouffroy," — so writes Mr. Johnson. 1 
But other Frenchmen besides Cousin and Jouffroy were instru- 
mental in taking up and carrying on the movement of Transcen- 
dentalism. Nine writers at least acted more or less the part of 
agents in developing in France the idealism of the later eighteenth 
and early nineteenth centuries; they are: Laromiguiere, Royer- 
Collard, Maine de Biran, Degenerando, Guizot, Villiers, and Mme. 
de Stael, as well as Victor Cousin and Theodore Jouffroy. 

France and Germany, indeed, in the early part of the nineteenth 
century, were the two great philosophical nations of Europe. 
The position of philosophy in these two countries, occupying the 
center of the European stage, is interesting. It marks an era of 
transition. With the close of the eighteenth century, Germany 
terminated an era of exclusive idealism, the idealism of Kant, 
Fichte, Hegel, Schelling; and France, taking up the idealistic 
movement where Germany laid it down, brought to a close an era 
of exclusive sensualism — the sensualism of the French Encyclo- 
pedists, Condillac, d'Holbach, and Helvetius. 

The writers in France who especially helped to effect the transi- 
tion from the exclusive sensualism of the eighteenth century school 
of philosophy to an eclectic idealism — of a German Transcendental 
sort — of the early nineteenth century are, — Laromiguiere, who 
succeeded in separating the element of attention from sensation; 

1 Transcendentalism, S. Johnson, Boston, 1884. 



24 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Royer-Collard, who further undermined materialistic philosophy 
and introduced into France the incipient idealism of Scotch as 
well as German philosophy; Maine de Biran, who traced in an 
interesting way the origin of elevated ideas to human conscious- 
ness; Degenerando 1 who helped to bolster up, in his " Systemes 
compares de philosophic," the current idealistic theories; and, 
finally, the two distinguished philosophers, Cousin and Jouffroy, 
whom we have especially under consideration. 

Several other figures in French literature are connected, in a 
minor wav, with the idealistic movement in France which we have 
under consideration. Cabanis, who discussed systematically the 
relations of body and soul, is distinguished for being the predeces- 
sor of Laromiguiere. Saint-Simon, the forerunner of Fourier, is 
regarded as the founder of French socialism of an idealistic, 
communistic nature. And then there are several French critics 
and philosophers who followed in the wake of Cousin and Jouffroy 
and are worthy of note in passing because of their sympathies and 
interests of a Transcendental sort, namely, Paul Janet, the 
author of a treatise on Plato ; Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who made 
expositions of Aristotle's works and Hindu philosophy; Bouillet, 
the author of a dissertation on Plotinus; Emile Saisset, who dis- 
cussed Spinoza; Tissot and Barni, who wrote upon Kant; and 
J. Simon and E. Vacherot, who were interested in the philosophic 
system of Cousin and undertook expositions of the Alexandrine 
School. But these figures either preceded or followed the main 
idealistic movement and are not directly connected with the 
transmission of Transcendentalism into France. 

Madame de Stael was the first of the important French writers 
who were agents in transmitting German Transcendentalism into 
France. She traveled extensively in Germany during the years 
1803-1804 ; wrote in her " De L'Allemagne," first published in 
1810, critical appreciations of such German idealists as Wieland, 
the Schlegels, Fichte, Kant, and Jacobi ; and even attempted in this 
volume cursory expositions of German philosophy in the chapters, 
— " De l'influence de la nouvelle philosophie sur le caractere des 
Allemands," " Des philosophes les plus celebres de l'Allemagne, 

1 Mentioned by Cousin in Introduction to History of Philosophy, and by one of 
the editors of The Died. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 25 

avant et apres Kant," and " Du principe de la morale, dans la 
nouvelle philosophie allemande." l 

We cite a selection or so, to illustrate the tenor of her writings 
bearing on German Transcendentalism, from her " La philosophie 
et la morale" in " De L'Allemagne " : 

" Parmi les differentes branches de la philosophie, celle qui a 
particulierement occupe les Allemands, c'est la metaphysique. 
Les objets qu'elle embrasse peuvent etre divises en trois classes. 
La premiere se rapporte au mystere de la creation, c'est-a-dire a 
l'infini en toutes choses ; la seconde a la formation des idees dans 
l'esprit humain; et la troisieme a l'exercice de nos facultes, sans 
remonter a leur source. . . . Une foule de questions morales et 
religieuses dependent de la maniere dont on considere l'origine de 
la formation de nos idees. C'est surtout la diversite des systemes 
a cet egard qui separa les philosophes allemandes des philosophes 
fran9ais. ... II est done impossible de faire connaitre l'Alle- 
magne, sans indiquer la raarche de la philosophie, qui depuis 
Leibnitz jusqu'a nos jours n'a cesse d'exercer un si grand em- 
pire sur la republique des lettres. . . . Je demandais un jour a 
Fichte, 1'une des plus fortes tetes pensantes de l'Allemagne, s'il ne 
pouvait pas me dire sa morale, plutot que sa metaphysique. * L'une 
depend de l'autre,' me repondit-il. Et ce mot etait plein de pro- 
fondeur ; il renferme tous les motifs de l'interet qu'on peut prendre 
a la philosophie. . . . On s'est accoutume a la considerer comme 
destructive de toutes les croyances du cceur; elle serait alors la 
veritable ennemie de l'homme; mais il n'en est point ainsi de 
la doctrine de Platon, ni de celle des Allemands ; ils regardent le 
sentiment comme un fait, comme le fait primitif de Tame, et la 
raison philosophique comme destinee seulement a rechercher 
la signification de ce fait." 2 

Victor Cousin, however, was a still more significant figure than 
Madame de Stael. In one of his lectures Schelling makes an in- 
teresting statement. He tells us : "In his different visits to Ger- 
many Cousin has won great personal esteem and friendship, not 
only among philosophers by profession, but among the German 

1 Cf. (Euvres completes de Madame la Baronne de Stael, Holstein, Tome 
Deuxieme, A Paris, Firmin-Didot Freres et Cie., 1836, first published in 1810. 
a De L'Allemagne, Troisieme partie, chapitre premier. 



26 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

scholars in general. The peculiar circumstances which give the 
Germans a permanent interest in his labors is that he, together 
with the able and profoundly learned Guizot and a few others 
(Mine, de Stael, and M. Villiers in particular) was the first, after 
the restoration of peace from the wars of the Revolution, to awaken 
the attention of his countrymen to German science and literature. 
Cousin accomplished this particularly in regard to philosophy." 
He traveled in Germany in 1817, and again in 1824 ; and his divers 
lectures and writings bear abundant testimony to the fruitfulness 
of these visits. Cousin, moreover, following in the steps of his 
masters, Maine de Biran and Royer-Collard, helped to transmit the 
idealism of the Scotch philosophers of the later eighteenth century 
into France. He acted, indeed, as a kind of unifying factor, gather- 
ing to himself, assimilating, and recreating three phases of idealism 
which flourished simultaneously and with more or less distinctness 
in Europe along the latter part of the eighteenth century, — the 
German Transcendentalism of Kant and his followers ; the Scotch 
idealism of Reid and Dugald-Stewart ; and the incipient idealistic 
movement in France set afoot chiefly by such predecessors as 
Laromiguiere, Maine de Biran, and Royer-Collard. 

Madame de Stael, then, was the one to call the attention of 
Frenchmen to the German Transcendental philosophers, espe- 
cially to Fichte and Jacobi. She was undoubtedly the first to 
become definitely acquainted with, and arouse widespread interest 
in France in German idealism, and in her remarkable volume — 
" De L'Allemagne " — she helped to bridge in a happy way the 
gulf in philosophy between the two countries. But her mission 
as a transmitter of Transcendentalism into France was of a 
cursory nature. It remained for Victor Cousin, and his disciple, 
Theodore Jouffroy, to develop the movement more extensively and 
thoroughly. They undertook investigations and expositions not 
only of the German philosophers but as well of the systems of 
Scotch and French idealists who came into vogue contemporary 
with the German Transcendentalists along the latter part of the 
eighteenth century. Cousin and Jouffroy, in short, developed, 
with a broad and proficient scholarship, the idealistic movement 
in France of the early nineteenth century, one phase of which — 
the introduction of German Transcendentalism — Madame de 
Stael successfully initiated. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 27 



2. Victor Cousin 

Within sixty years, from 1760 to 1820, the source of philosophy in 
Europe underwent the changes of three distinct schools, — the 
Scottish, the German, the French. The leader of the Scottish 
School, which originated about 1760, was Reid. The German 
School, ascendant about 1790, arose out of the Transcendental 
philosophy of Kant and was highly developed by the German 
metaphysicians who succeeded him. The French School, inspired 
for the most part by the Germans, blossomed about 1820, with the 
idealistic, eclectic writings of Cousin and his disciple Jounroy. All 
three schools were movements away from materialism in the direc- 
tion of idealism, and all three represent successive stages of what is 
known as Transcendentalism. Victor Cousin, the principal ex- 
ponent of French idealism of the early nineteenth century, and the 
most noteworthy French precursor of New-England Transcen- 
dentalism, although of humble origin, was yet a man of high 
education, profound learning, and wide travel. 

" The philosophical merits of Cousin," writes George Ripley 1 
the chief interpreter of Cousin in New England, " will probably 
not be new to the majority of the readers of these volumes. The 
translations which have been already made of two of his most 
important works 2 have contributed to give currency to his ideas, 
and in many cases to awaken a lively zeal for the study of the 
original. I may venture to say that there is no living philosopher 
who has a greater number of readers in this country, and none 
whose works have met with a more genuine sympathy, a more 
cordial recognition. He is destined, in my opinion, to exert an 
important influence on the development of thought, and the con- 
dition of philosophy in our youthful land." These words coming 
from George Ripley, who was one of the prime leaders of Tran- 
scendentalism in New England and most intimately acquainted 



1 Q. v. Preface to Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, Vol. I, Hilliard, 
Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 

2 fa) Introduction to the History of Philosophy, translated by H. G. Linberg, 
Boston, 1832. 

(b) Elements of Psychology, translated by C. S. Henry, Hartford, 1834. 



28 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

with the men of letters who formed with him the van of the Tran- 
scendental movement there, are significant. 

Victor Cousin, the distinguished French philosopher who im- 
bibed and recreated to such an extent the idealistic movement in 
philosophy of his time in Europe and helped conspicuously to pass 
it along to contemporaries in America, was born at Paris, Novem- 
ber 28, 1792. Of lowly birth, a vagabond in Paris streets, he saved 
a rich lad from a pommeling in a fist fight ; the wealthy darling's 
mother in gratitude rescued the fisticuff hero from the gutters of 
Paris, placed him in the Lycee Charlemagne, and helped him to 
become one of the prize scholars of the school. In 1810, at the age 
of eighteen, the brilliant young man entered the Normal School, 
which he never quitted after he was appointed head subsequent 
to the Revolution of 1830; he was appointed instructor in Litera- 
ture at the close of the year 1812; and he was made Master of 
Conferences, in place of Villemain, in 1814. The life of phil- 
osophical achievement, from the beginning, absorbed him. 

Cousin's philosophical knowledge in his early days as lecturer 
was not profound or extensive. He was dependent a deal for the 
little he had upon such masters in French philosophy as Maine de 
Biran, Royer-Collard, and Laromiguiere. In his course at the 
Ecole Normale the first year (1815-1816) he undertook to expound 
the Scottish philosophy of Reid and Dugald-Stewart, separating 
with clear analysis the good from the inferior in their system. The 
second year he with considerable success attacked and refuted the 
sensualistic doctrine of Condillac which was based on the empirical 
materialistic philosophy of Locke. He then continued along the 
lines of his predecessors, — in France, Maine de Biran and Royer- 
Collard, and in Germany, Kant, — developing the psychological 
as well as the Transcendental in his system* In 1822, when the 
Normal School was suppressed and Cousin in temporary disgrace, 
he traveled abroad to augment his learning and reputation. He 
made a tour of the German universities, large and small, interro- 
gating not only philosophers but as well theologians. He met 
personally in friendly intercourse Goethe, Hegel, and Schleier- 
macher. At the sly instigation of a French Jesuit, he was arrested 
by the Prussian government on the charge of being a spy; but he 
deported himself during the disagreeable trial with such intelligent 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 29 

— if not Transcendental — equanimity that his release was ex- 
pedited and the German authorities were inspired with respect and 
admiration for him. 

With the elections of 1827, the Villele administration was over- 
thrown, Royer-Collard was elected to the presidency, and Cousin 
was reestablished as professor in the Faculty of the Normal 
School. He continued to lecture then, before enthusiastic bodies 
of students, till 1830, — his lectures being taken down word for 
word by stenographers, printed, and widely circulated. He passed, 
according to the strict forms of university promotion, from one of 
the Faculty of Literature in the Normal School to the royal council 
and principal direction of the institution. In order to provide a 
place for his ablest pupil, JoufTroy, he gave up to him the Chair 
of History of Modern Philosophy and assumed incumbency of 
the Chair of Ancient Philosophy. He constantly endeavored 
along idealistic lines to increase the prestige of the University. 
His energy, talents, and noteworthy services in the course 
of popular philosophy and belles-lettres finally led, after the 
death of Fourier, to his candidacy and election of the French 
Academy. 

The following are the principal philosophical works of M. 
Cousin in the original arranged in chronological order : " Fragments 
philosophiques " (1826-1828), " Cours d'histoire de la phi- 
losophic " (1827-1840), " Cours d'histoire de la philosophic morale 
au XVIII siecle " (1840-1841), " Des pensees de Pascal " (1842), 
" Du vrai, du beau, et du bien " (1854), and, finally, " Histoire 
generale de la philosophic " (1864). One of the early American 
translators, however, C. S. Henry, gives us in his preface to his 
edition of Cousin 1 a somewhat more complete list of the early 
publications of the great eclectic philosopher, — an edition of 
" Proclus " in six volumes (1820-1827) ; an edition of " Des- 
cartes " in eleven volumes (1824-1828) ; " Philosophical Frag- 
ments/' first edition, 1826, and second edition, 1833 ; " New 
Philosophical Fragments," 1828; "Introduction to the History 
of Philosophy," 1828; translation of " Tenneman's Manual of the 
History of Philosophy," 1829; "History of the Philosophy of 
the Eighteenth Century," 1829; works of Maine de Biran, 
1 Cousin, by C. S. Henry, Gould & Newman, N. Y., 1838. 



30 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Metaphysics of Aristotle, Scholastic Philosophy, and, finally, a 
translation of Plato with critical notes. 

From these two catalogues of Cousin's works, the first from 
the New Century Cyclopedia and the other from the Preface to 
C. S. Henry's translation of Cousin, we see that there were 
already published during the flood-tide of Transcendentalism in 
New England at least nine of Cousin's works, namely: (1) the 
edition of "Proclus," (2) the edition of " Descartes," (3) the " Phil- 
osophical Fragments," (4) the " New Philosophical Fragments," 
(5) the " Introduction to the History of Philosophy," (6) the 
" Translation of Tenneman's Manual," (7) the " History of the 
Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century," (8) the " Course of 
Modern History," and (9) the " Moral Philosophy of the Eigh- 
teenth Century." And we find that of these nine at least five 
were, before 1842, translated, published, and widely circulated in 
New England, namely: three by George Ripley, 1 (1) " Preface to 
Tenneman's Manual," (2) "Preface to Philosophical Fragments," 
(3) "Preface to New Philosophical Fragments"; another by 
C. S. Henry, 2 (4) " History of Moral Philosophy of the Eigh- 
teenth Century"; and still another by H. G. Linberg, 3 (5) "In- 
troduction to the History of Philosophy." It is worthy of 
mention, too, by the way, that in The Dial of October, 1840, 
there is an elaborate critical review of Cousin's " Cours d'histoire 
de la philosophic morale au XVIII siecle " and the " CEuvres 
completes de Platon." It is, however, with the system of phi- 
losophy set forth in the five American translations of Cousin 
that we are chiefly concerned; for it is these works of Cousin 
which were read by the New-England Transcendentalists and 
which must have in no small measure furnished a basis for 
Transcendentalism in its early stages in New England. 

Cousin's system of philosophy, as found in the five American 
translations, may be described as Eclecticism. It is eclectic in that 
it seeks to separate the best in all systems of philosophy and to con- 
struct with these choice selections a new perfect system. This 
eclectic method of Cousin is idealistic in tone, but it is not merely 

1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 

■ Gould & Newman, N. Y., 1838. (See also earlier edition, Hartford, 1834.) 

* Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins, Boston, 1832. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 31 

idealistic, being characterized not a little by empiricist and ration- 
alist methods and principles. It is not so poetic as Plato, nor so 
ingenious as Berkeley, nor so rigorously rational as Kant; but it 
combines in greater or less degree, with a peculiarly admirable 
and somewhat empirical order and precision, elements of Plato, 
Berkeley, and Kant. 

The Middle Ages were subject to authority; everything was 
classified and controlled. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
mark the inception of a new movement, the spirit of independence 
and the age of revolution. The eighteenth century is characterized 
by a spirit of scrutiny and analysis, as well as independence and 
development. Cousin passes in review the scholasticism of the 
Middle Ages, the philosophizings in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries of Bacon and Descartes, and the principal systems in 
the eighteenth century of Locke, d'Holbach, Condillac; and the 
result of this examination of the course of philosophy Cousin tells 
us is the discovery of four distinct systems, namely: (1) Sensual- 
ism; (2) Skepticism; (3) Mysticism; (4) Idealism. The first, 
Sensualism, regards sensation as the sole principle of knowledge 
and reason. Skepticism, in its clearest form, notes the appearance 
of common sense on the scene of philosophy. Mysticism, on the 
other hand, designates a spirit the reverse of skepticism and allied 
to the symbolism and spiritualism of theology. Idealism, finally, 
takes as its point of departure from the reason of sensualism, the 
ideas or the laws infinite and eternal which govern its activity. 
The fact of the existence of these systems constitutes for Cousin 
an endorsement of their utility. They are useful in having helped 
to develop at a certain time a certain phase of human intelligence. 
They are also truthful in part, for absolute error is, according 
to Transcendentalism, inadmissible as regards human intel- 
ligence. It is the province of eclecticism, Cousin concludes, not 
absolutely to reject any one of them, nor to become the dupe of 
any one of them; but, by a discriminating criticism, to discern 
and accept the unalloyed truth in each. 

In the "Preface to Tenneman's Outlines" 1 Cousin declares, 
illustrating his method of eclecticism, that modern philosophy can 

1 Preface to Translation of Tenneman's Outlines of History of Philosophy, 
q. v. Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, G. Ripley, editor. 



82 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

only take one of three courses: (1) Abdicate, renounce its inde- 
pendence, submit again to the ancient authority; or (2) continue 
its troubled motion in the circle of worn-out systems which mu- 
tually destroy each other; or (3) disengage what is true in each 
of these systems, and construct from the discriminated portions 
a philosophy superior to all systems. In the "Introduction to 
the History of Philosophy," * we come across another character- 
istic example of his eclectic method in a passage comparing Idealism 
and Sensualism : " You can neither abide by either of these two 
systems, nor escape from both. If, then, it has been proved on 
the one hand, that neither the one nor the other of these two systems 
can be regarded as the result of the last effort of the human mind, 
and if on the other hand, it has been also proved that not a single 
other system is given which is not reducible either to one or to the 
other of these two, what is to be done ? Being thus hedged in by 
the necessity of either choosing between two opposite systems of 
which both are bad, or tormenting ourselves in vain to find a new 
system, which would nevertheless be either the one or the other 
of them more or less modified, we arrive, in extricating ourselves 
from this dilemma, at the only possible solution which yet remains, 
and which consists in the combination of these contrary systems, 
by rejecting all the exclusive views which we cannot admit, and by 
reconciling all the truths which they contain, which can be done 
only by regarding them in a point of view which, being more com- 
prehensive than that of either the one or the other system, may be 
capable of including, and thus of explaining and completing them 
both." 

Eclecticism is not, however, according to Cousin's own confes- 
sion, a conception which belongs exclusively to himself. It did 
not originate yesterday. It was born the moment that a sound 
head and a feeling heart undertook to reconcile two passionate 
adversaries ; it was long ago in the mind of Plato ; and among the 
moderns it was not merely proposed by Leibnitz, it was constantly 
practised by him, and is everywhere presented in the rich his- 
torical views of the new German philosophy. The name Electicism, 
however, applied to this eclectic method in philosophy, originated 
with Cousin ; and he and his disciple Jouffroy are generally referred 
1 H. G. Linberg translation, Boston, 1832. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 33 

to in text-books on philosophy as " the Eclectic Philosophers " 
of France in the early nineteenth century. 

The immediate predecessors of Cousin and his idealistic eclectic 
philosophy were, as has already been pointed out, the idealistic 
philosophers of the German, Scottish, and French schools of the 
latter part of the eighteenth century. From Maine de Biran he 
had his attention focused on the activity of the human mind, and 
was led to separate it from circumstances, to analyze its character, 
and to ascend to its original source in will ; from Laromiguiere he 
got the phenomena of sensation cleared in his mind, and saw the 
faculties of understanding and will referred to their ultimate 
foundation ; from Royer-Collard he was led to see in particular the 
radical errors and hopeless limitations of the sensual philosophy, 
and how new life and fresh interest could be imparted to familiar 
truths. But Cousin, irrespective of the immediate influence of 
such precursors in France as Maine de Biran and Laromiguiere 
and Royer-Collard, acknowledges especial indebtedness to Reid, 
the Scotch idealist, and to Kant, the German Transcendentalist. 
" Reid and Kant," he tells us, " in Scotland and Germany, have 
fought to the death, and overthrown from top to bottom the 
doctrine of Locke." l And again, after dividing in true Transcen- 
dental style the phenomena of consciousness into three classes, he 
writes : " This philosophy is represented in the philosophy of 
the nineteenth century by the Scottish School; and especially by 
the School of Kant, which, professing the same method, applies 
it with far more rigor and completeness." 2 However much the 
Scottish School of Reid and Dugald-Stewart or even his predeces- 
sors in France may have affected Cousin, the influence of the 
German School assuredly preponderates. In the "Introduction 
to the History of Philosophy " 3 our distinguished Eclectic writes : 
■' Kant is the true founder of rational psychology. . . . His cos- 
mology and his philosophy of nature are nothing but a transfer 
by induction of the subjective laws of thought into external nature." 

1 Preface to Philosophical Fragments, First Edition, 1826, G. Ripley transla- 
tion, Boston, 1838. 

2 Philosophical Fragments, Second Edition, 1833, G. Ripley translation, Boston, 
1838. 

3 Introduction to the History of Philosophy, H. G. Linberg translation, Boston, 
1832. 



34 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

And in the same volume he tells us, — "Fichte has, with greater 
consistency, gone further than his master (Kant). ... In Fichte 
every object, being in respect to the subject nothing but what the 
subject causes it to be, is nothing but an induction of that subject, 
that is the subject itself, that is, the me; and thus the me is no 
longer considered merely as the measure, but as the principle of 
all things." And, finally, after personal acquaintance with Hegel 
and his lectures, Cousin confesses : " From our first conversa- 
tion, I divined what he was, I comprehended his whole reach, 
I felt that I was in the presence of a superior man; and when 
I continued my journey from Heidelberg into other parts of 
Germany, I proclaimed him wherever I went; . . . his diction 
strong, but embarrassed ; his countenance immovable ; his brow 
covered with clouds, seemed the image of thought returning on 
itself." 

The translation of the complete works of Plato, and the high 
regard professed for the personality and utterances of Hegel, 
plainly intimate the phases of philosophy to which Cousin is partial. 
In the American translations of his works, too, one finds that he 
makes frequent allusions, as the New England Transcendentalists 
do in their writings, to such philosophies of the East as the Vedas 
and the Bhagavad-Gita, to the Greek philosopher Aristotle as well 
as his teacher Plato, and to such philosophers of Transcendental 
bent in Germany, besides Fichte, Kant, and Hegel, as Leibnitz, 
Schlegel, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. One comes across also 
here and there isolated reference to such diverse figures with ideal- 
istic proclivity as Pythagoras, the Neo-Platonists, the English 
philosopher Bishop Berkeley, and the Dutch metaphysician 
Spinoza. Cousin, in short, is familiar with divers utterances bear- 
ing ear-marks of Transcendentalism in Hindu, Greek, German, 
and other sources. He is, along with these early philosophers, at 
the core more or less of a downright idealist, attaching impor- 
tance to intuition, " immediate beholding," in the realms of phi- 
losophy, and disposed in general, as were his titanic Transcen- 
dental predecessors in Germany, to subordinate nature and ex- 
perience to man, not man and nature to experience. 

By means of citations from his writings let us attempt to set 
forth briefly the kernel of the Transcendental in Cousin. In the 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 35 

translation of "Introduction to the History of Philosophy, 1 we find 
such passages as these : " Inspiration is, in all languages, dis- 
tinguished from reflection; it is the perception of truth without 
the intervention of volition and of individual personality. . . . 
The characteristic of inspiration is enthusiasm ; it is accompanied 
with that forcible emotion which bears the soul away from its 
ordinary and subaltern state and disengages from it the sublime 
and godlike portion of its nature. The language of inspiration is 
poetry. . . . Spontaneity is the genius of humanity, as philosophy 
is the genius of some men. . . . Search in the history of languages, 
of societies, and of every remote epoch, and you will find nothing 
anterior to the lyric element, to hymns, to litanies. . . . Respect 
humanity in all its members ; for in all its members there is a ray 
of divine intelligence and essential fraternity." And again illus- 
trating in particular the eclectic spirit applied to idealism we quote 
from the same volume : " Idealism is that philosophy which, 
struck with the reality, the fecundity, and the independence of 
thought, of its laws, and of the ideas inherent in it, concentrates 
its attention upon these ideas alone, and beholds in them the 
principles of all things. Idealism is as true and just as necessary 
as empiricism. Without empiricism we should never have all that 
was continued in the bosom of sensation; and without idealism 
we should never have known the power properly belonging to 
thought." 

In the "Elements of Psychology" 2 we come across other pas- 
sages exemplifying elements of idealism in Cousin : " Enthusiasm 
is that spontaneous intuition of truth by reason, as independent as 
possible of the personality and of the senses, of induction and 
demonstration, a state which has been found true, legitimate, and 
founded upon the nature of human reason. But sometimes it 
happens that the senses and the personality which inspiration 
ought to surmount and reduce to silence, introduce themselves 
into the inspiration itself and mingle with it material, arbitrary, 
false, and ridiculous details. . . . Do not go to consult the savage, 
the child, or the idiot, to know whether they have the idea of God ; 
ask them, or rather without asking them anything, ascertain if 

1 H. G. Linberg translation, Boston, 1832. 

2 C. S. Henry translation, Boston, 1838. 



36 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

they have the idea of the imperfect and the finite; and if they 
have it, and they cannot but have it if they have the least percep- 
tion, be sure that they have an obscure and confused idea of some- 
thing infinite and perfect ; be sure that what they discern of them- 
selves and of the world does not suffice them, and that they at 
once humble and exalt themselves in a deep felt faith in the exist- 
ence of something infinite and perfect." 

And again, in the "Preface to Philosophical Fragments," ' we 
happen upon such passages of a distinctly idealistic bent as the fol- 
lowing : " The differences of individuals exhibit something noble 
and interesting, because they testify to the independence of each of 
us and separate man from nature. We are men and not stars ; we 
have moments that are peculiar to ourselves; but all our move- 
ments however irregular in appearance, are accomplished within the 
circle of our nature, the two extremities of which are essentially 
similar. Spontaneity is the point of departure; reflection the 
point of return; the entire circumference is the intellectual life; 
the center is Absolute Intelligence which governs and explains the 
whole." In the same volume we also discover this explicit and 
significant statement : " In the recesses of consciousness, and 
at a depth to which Kant did not penetrate, under the apparent 
relativeness and subjectivity of the necessary principles of thought, 
I detected and unfolded the fact, instantaneous but real, of the 
spontaneous perception of truth, — a perception which, not re- 
flecting itself immediately, passes without notice in the interior of 
consciousness, but is the actual basis of that which, at a subse- 
quent period, in a logical form and in the hands of reflection, 
becomes a necessary conception." And once more, farther on 
in the same volume, we find these words : " Every man, if he 
knows himself, knows all the rest, nature and God at the same 
time with himself. Every man believes in his own existence, every 
man therefore believes in the existence of the world and of God; 
every man thinks, every man therefore thinks God, if we may so 
express it." Cousin's words have, in truth, in certain passages, 
the ring of Transcendentalism. He rigorously opposes the empiri- 
cist method of observation limited to the external world and sensi- 
bility alone, after the manner of Locke and Condillac ; and stoutly 
1 First Edition, G. Ripley translation, Boston, 1838. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 37 

maintains along with Reid and Kant that human consciousness 
in itself constitutes the sure key to universal phenomena. 

We conclude our exposition of the essence of Transcendentalism 
in the philosophy of Cousin by citing at random a few epigrams from 
miscellaneous sources in the American translations of his works : 

"There is nothing intelligible but ideas." 

"All things are in all things." 

"Our negative ideas are secondary and logical. Our primary ideas 
are positive and absolute." 

"We do not commune with reflection, but with intuition." 

"What has produced the vision of God of Malebranche, and the pre- 
established harmony of Leibnitz?" 

"The field of philosophical observation is consciousness; there is no 
other." 

"Every man, if he knows himself, knows all the rest, nature and God 
at the same time with himself." 

"The human race, like the individual, lives only by faith." 

"The first act of faith is the belief in the soul, and the last — the belief 
in God." 

The merits of Cousin's Eclecticism stand out, at first sight, with 
more or less distinctness. His philosophy evinces, from the first, 
abundant proof that it is the product of no ordinary thinker, but 
the utterance of an intelligence at once powerful and comprehen- 
sive, combining acute discernment and precise reasoning with com- 
mand of language and facility in exposition. His lectures render 
the most abstruse and difficult metaphysical problems at once, 
even to the average mind, clear. 

A noteworthy writer for the Edinburgh Review testifies on be- 
half of Cousin : "He has consecrated his life and labors to phi- 
losophy, and to philosophy alone; nor has he approached the 
sanctuary with unwashed hands. The editor of Proclus and of 
Descartes, the translator and interpreter of Plato, and the promised 
expositor of Kant, will not be accused of partiality in the choice 
of his pursuits while his two works, under the title of * Philosophical 
Fragments,' bear ample evidence to the learning, elegance, and 
distinguished ability of their author." And one of Cousin's con- 
temporaries writes : " If it be true that Voltaire represented the 



38 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

spirit of the greater part of the higher orders in France, when he 
said that the success of Helvetius was not astonishing because he 
only told the secret of all the world, that is, of all the world at 
his day, it is but reasonable to conclude that the spirit of the well 
informed and intelligent young men in France, who at the present 
day idolize Cousin, is superior to the spirit presented by Voltaire, 
as the interior, intelligent, and dignified philosophy of Cousin is 
superior to the superficial, fanciful, and groveling sensualism of 
Helvetius." 

The philosophy of Cousin, in short, establishes harmony be- 
tween feeling and speculation, between emotional impulse and 
rational reflection. It listens to the voice of humanity, and suc- 
ceeds in consummating a much needed union between religion 
and philosophy. It demolishes by lucid scientific analysis the ma- 
terialism of Locke and Condillac with their unimaginative limita- 
tions. It builds up on the basis of intuitive faith a system 
of idealism akin to the world-great idealistic philosophies, ex- 
pressing thoughts having the color of the thoughts of Plato, Ploti- 
nus, Proclus, Berkeley, Reid, Dugald-Stewart, Kant, Fichte, 
Hegel, Jacobi. Emphasizing the idea of universal harmony, 
reconciling the divorce between materialism and idealism, and 
being expressed, withal, in a grand literary style noteworthy for 
clearness, vigor, and grace, it is no wonder the Eclectic philosophy 
of Cousin tended to become for disciples in Europe and America 
a kind of laical religion, the religion of the enlightened spirits of 
the day. 

The defects of Cousin's system seem to be threefold; it tends 
to the mediocre, the pretentious, and the sentimental. Eclecti- 
cism, being a kind of hodge-podge composition of the idealistic 
systems in Scotland, Germany, and France, respectively, of the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, must inevitably be less original 
and organic than the sources from which it w r as extracted. It ap- 
pears to start, moreover, at the outset, with two fundamentally 
false hypotheses : (1) that all truths have already been expressed 
and only await clever eclectic editing; and (2) that the heteroge- 
neous best in all philosophies can be excerpted and welded into 
a fresh and original perfect system. And, finally, after the manner 
of idealism in general, it manifests distinct partialities of its own 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 39 

and frequently errs on the side of the affectedly tender, — being 
disposed to depict in too rosy a hue the optimistic phases of social 
and human life, and to be too negligent of the various hard and 
cruel facts of nature and human experience. The Eclecticism of 
Cousin is, when all is said, a second class order of philosophy. 
It is a kind of critical and appreciative resume of philosophy, not 
philosophy itself. It may be rated in the province of philosophy 
as opportunism is rated in the field of politics; it is in greater or 
less degree ingenious, but despite all, it is anomalous and more 
or less inefficient. 

The spirit, rather than the contents of Cousin's system of Eclec- 
ticism, then, is what holds our interest and attention. The au- 
thor's literary style is finished and brilliant; he sets forth high 
truths with regal sureness; he uplifts and fortifies the soul with 
fresh hope and confidence. We are, indeed, notwithstanding the 
somewhat amorphous and heterogeneous nature of the philosophy, 
not unseldom swept off our feet by it in bursts of sympathy and 
faith. 



3. Theodore Jouffroy 

The noted eclectic philosopher Jouffroy, referred to by one of 
the New-England Transcendentalists, W. H. Channing, as " one 
of the most profound French philosophers of the nineteenth cen- 
tury," was the disciple of Cousin, and, like his master, exerted 
considerable influence on the philosophy in France and the Tran- 
scendentalism in New England of his day. He was in character and 
temperament more grave, subjective, religious, even more fascinat- 
ing, than his master, Cousin, but still less original, forceful, elo- 
quent. He is distinguished not only for continuing, in the 
province of French philosophy of the Restoration Period, the 
work of the founder of the Eclectic School, but as well for enrich- 
ing it with many profound and sincere refinements of thought and 
beauty. 

Born five years after Cousin in Franche-Comte, of North Central 
France, Theodore Simon Jouffroy came to Paris when he was seven- 
teen years old and entered in 1814 the Ecole Normale. His parents 



40 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

were orthodox Christians who professed the ideas of 1789, and the 
young man was brought up inoculated with the views of the family. 
At the itcole Normale, studying under Laromiguiere, Royer- 
Collard, and his senior contemporary Victor Cousin, Jouffroy 
found his religious sympathies to be irreconcilable with the prin- 
ciples of philosophy. He became for a time quite uneasy and 
melancholy ; but his scientific consciousness triumphed in the end 
over certain religious tastes, and won for him the respect of fellow 
professors and pupils. In 1828 he was accorded, through the 
kind offices of Cousin, a course in " Ancient Philosophy " in the 
Faculte of the Normal School ; and in 1830, at the age of thirty- 
four, he was appointed Professor of History of Modern Philosophy 
and Master of Conferences. Two years later, in 1832, he was 
elected Professor of Greek and Latin Philosophy at the College de 
France; and, after 1838, acted as Librarian of the University. 

Jouffroy went, not like his master, Cousin, from philosophy 
to faith, but the inverse, from faith to philosophy. He seems never 
to have become wholly reconciled to losing the peace of religion ; 
and the slight note of dolorous austerity in his writings is due in 
no small measure to religious sentiments left unsatisfied in his 
make-up. Despairing of pushing philosophy into the domains of 
orthodoxy, he naturally fell back on the self-contemplative and 
psychological processes which Cousin enjoined. His utterances, 
however, resound from first to last with a fervor and a tenderness 
to which Cousin, his master, never attained; we were, says Renan, 
charmed by Cousin's eloquence; but by Jouffroy's simplicity of 
emotion and moral grandeur we were inebriated. 

The writings of Jouffroy are considerably less numerous than 
those of Cousin. His first works of importance were " Transla- 
tions " of the Scottish philosophers, Reid and Dugald-Stewart. 
Later he published at intervals the following volumes : " Melanges 
philosophiques " (1833), " Nouveaux Melanges " (1842), "Cours 
de droit naturel," 3 vols. (1835-1842), and, finally, "Cours 
d'esthetique (1843) . The lectures on " Introduction to Ethics," 
which came out in the " Melanges philosophiques," were the 
first which Jouffroy had published. At the earnest request of 
the students who had attended his first course he consented to 
have them, when they were given again, taken down by a stenog- 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 41 

rapher. They set forth many choice thoughts of an idealistic 
flavor; some of the grand problems of human destiny; a review 
of various systems of ethics ; and certain fundamental principles 
of morality which Jouffroy himself, in an eclectic spirit, draws 
from various systems of ethics. 

Of the various writings in the original from Jouffroy, we have, 
under different titles, at least seven noteworthy American transla- 
tions : two by George Ripley in " Specimens of Foreign Standard 
Literature, ,, 1 namely : " Preface to Translation of Dugald- 
Stewart " and " Philosophical Miscellanies " ; two by William H. 
Channing from different publishers, — " Critical Survey of Moral 
Systems " 2 and " Introduction to Ethics " ; 3 and, finally, three by 
Robert N. Toppan : " Problem of Human Destiny," " Moral Facts 
of Human Nature," and " Theoretical Views." 4 These transla- 
tions from the original of Jouffroy amount in bulk to more than 
the translations from the original of Cousin. It may be interest- 
ing to remark too, in passing, that Dr. James Walker, professor 
of philosophy at Harvard, used in his classes from 1840 to 1850, 
as text-book to accompany some of his philosophical lectures, 
Jouffroy's " Introduction to Ethics." The philosophy of Jouffroy 
as set forth in the American translations must have influenced 
most our Transcendentalists of New England, as was the case 
with the American translations of Cousin; and so it is with the 
philosophy advanced in these just enumerated translations that 
we are chiefly concerned. 

Jouffroy and Cousin, one should note by the way, although in- 
fluenced in general by the same precursors of German, Scotch, and 
French origin, were yet influenced respectively in different degrees 
by different writers among these precursors. Cousin was particu- 
larly indebted to his fellow-countryman Maine de Biran (1766- 
1824) who traced the origin of elevated ideas to human conscious- 
ness and presented to France a new and more spiritual philosophy. 
Cousin was also in large measure indebted for philosophic princi- 
ples to the German Transcendentalists, especially to Fichte, Kant, 

1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 

1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1840. 

8 James Munroe & Co. (2 vols.), Boston, 1845. 

* W. H. Tinson, N. Y., 1862. 



42 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

and Hegel, and was influenced in an appreciably less degree by 
the Scottish idealists Reid and Dugald-Stewart. Jouffroy, on the 
other hand, was particularly influenced by the ideas of Maine de 
Biran's colleague, Laromiguiere (1756-1837), who reacted strongly 
against materialism and skilfully referred the human faculties of 
understanding and will to their ultimate foundation. Jouffroy, 
moreover, although somewhat acquainted with idealism in Ger- 
many of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a 
deal more intimately acquainted not only with the Scottish idealism 
of Reid (1710-1796) and Dugald-Stewart (1753-1828) but as well 
with the philosophies of their English contemporaries Cudworth 
and Price. A discerning investigator, on the alert for distinctions, 
may, indeed, plainly detect in the writings of Jouffroy beyond what 
may be detected in the writings of Cousin, ear-marks of the in- 
fluence of Laromiguiere rather than Maine de Biran and of Scottish 
and English rather than German idealistic philosophers. Both 
Cousin and Jouffroy, however, were wide readers in the province 
of philosophy, and were, as Eclectics, primarily systematic ex- 
pounders of the philosophies of others, rather than creators of new 
philosophies of their own. To give an inkling of the variety and 
range of their learning, and at the same time a cue to their dis- 
tinctly circumscribed eclectic spirit, we cite a passage from Jouf- 
froy's lecture on the " History of Philosophy " x (1827) : " When 
we think of the powerful minds, from Pythagoras to the present 
day, which have wrought in every part of the fields of philosophy ; 
above all, when we run through the admirable monuments of their 
researches ; ... we can hardly avoid conviction . . . that all the 
facts of human nature and philosophy have been perceived and 
noted, and that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fall upon a new 
idea or fact of importance." Let us now turn to a consideration 
of the philosophy in general of this French Eclectic as set forth in 
the several American translations. 

The lecture entitled " Introduction to Ethics," in which Jouffroy 
undertakes a critical review of various ethical systems, is remarka- 
ble for its wide research, scrupulous observation, and lucidity of 
expression. It is analytical and methodical almost to a fault. It 
determines with acumen upon the main issues in systems of ethics, 
1 Q. v. Melanges philosophiques, 1833. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 43 

is on the whole sane if somewhat partial in judgment of them, 
and uniformly accords due deference to good points in a system 
while sifting out errors. Through the luminous and well-regulated 
mind of Jouffroy, indeed, many a reader of his writings in New 
England was introduced for the first time, from an idealist's view- 
point, to the ethical principles of Hobbes, Bentham, Smith, Price, 
and others, and enabled to weigh them in the balance arranged 
and classified with admirable skill. 

In the lecture on " Philosophy and Common Sense " * we note, 
among other things, Jouffroy 's capacity for eclectic synthesis 
going hand in hand with superb French rationality. He tells us 
in this lecture that we are always likely to find the solution of com- 
mon sense more comprehensive than abstruse philosophical solu- 
tions. He shows himself to be appreciative of such practical 
philosophers as Zeno, the Stoic, who defined good as that which 
is in accordance with reason ; as Epicurus, the founder of an austere 
Hedonism, who defined good as agreeable sensation; and as the 
German critic of pure reason, Kant, who defined as good that 
which is obligatory. Common sense, according to Jouffroy, adopts 
all these opinions, and yet is committed to none of them. The 
exclusive spiritualists, our idealistic yet circumspect Eclectic con- 
tinues, affirm the existence of spirit; the exclusive materialists 
affirm the existence of matter; and the one ends with denying 
matter, and the other with denying spirit. But common sense 
equally admits both matter and spirit and thus places itself in 
some measure in contradiction to each of these systems and at the 
same time in some measure in agreement with them. The em- 
piricists, like Locke, recognize no source of knowledge as authentic 
but the senses; Descartes admits none but consciousness; Plato 
and Kant are disposed to make reason and conception predomi- 
nate over that which can be attained by the senses or conscious- 
ness. Common sense, or in other words, nineteenth century 
Eclecticism, acknowledges the authority of consciousness, of senses, 
and of reason. And, Jouffroy adds, if we pursue the parallel in 
regard to other questions, we shall always find the same result. 

Jouffroy, like his master and contemporary Cousin, is indeed a 
lucid, although cautious, systematizer. In his "Facts of Man's 

1 Q. v. Ripley's Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, Boston, 1838. 



44 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Moral Nature" 1 we come across a characteristic example of his 
proficiency along this line : " It is long since the common sense of 
humanity has declared that man sustains in this life four principal 
relations : the first, to God ; the second, to himself ; the third, to 
things, animate and inanimate, which people the creation; the 
fourth, to his kind. Through all ages, therefore, the inquiry has 
been, what are the rules for human conduct in these four grand 
relations; and the science of ethics has been divided into four 
corresponding branches." The four grand relations are, accord- 
ing to Jouffroy, man's relation to (1) God, Religion; (2) Self, 
Mysticism; (3) Things, Pantheism ; and (4) Fellows, Humanism. 
Let us consider briefly, then, some of Jouffroy's views concerning 
these principal relations. 

Under the division, Man's Relation to God, he assures us that 
from the moment an organized being begins to exist its nature 
tends to the end for which it is destined, viz., good, or God. 
" As soon as man exists, his nature aspires, in virtue of his organiza- 
tion, to the end for which he is destined, through impulses carrying 
him on irresistibly towards it. . . . When reason first begins to 
exert its power, it finds human nature in full development, its 
tendencies all in play, and its faculties active. In virtue of its 
nature, that is to say, of its power of comprehension, it enters into 
the meaning of surrounding phenomena, and it at once compre- 
hends that all these tendencies and faculties are seeking one 
common end, a final and complete end, which is the satisfaction of 
our entire nature. . . . Toward this good all passions of every 
kind aspire ; and it is this good (God) which our nature is impelled, 
with every unfolding faculty, to seek." To the student of the 
history of philosophy this passage alone, concerning man's rela- 
tion to God, reveals at once what an adept idealistic eclectic Jouffroy 
is. We discern in it certain fundamental ideas of Plato, Aristotle, 
Fichte, Kant, and others, skilfully appropriated and fused into a 
new order. 

The discussion of the division, Man's Relation to Himself, 

Mysticism, is equally pointed and interesting. It is the chief tenet 

of mysticism, Jouffroy informs us, that the human mind can, 

through contemplation, arrive at an understanding of truth and 

1 W. H. Charming translation, Boston, 1840. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 45 

actual being, of which it is quite incapable in its ordinary condition , 
and can thus hold communion with the future, with unseen spirits, 
with God Himself. The most perfect symbol of mysticism is the 
anchorite who conceived the idea of living upon the top of a column, 1 
and who passed long years there in total inactivity. Every system, 
Jouffroy continues, in true eclectic manner, has some truth for its 
foundation. Man cannot without some absorption of his faculties 
in contemplation attain the highest good, and that degree of good 
which is accessible, that complete destiny which his nature prom- 
ises, must be gained by painful effort, by earnest self-imposed 
self-restraint. But Jouffroy sanely concludes that the conse- 
quences which the mystics deduce from this are false. It is in 
becoming a person that we become a cause, a free intelligent cause, 
having an end and plan and responsibility for acts, — in a word, 
something like to God. The state of being a kind of watch, en- 
dowed with sensation, and enjoying passively the pleasure of feel- 
ing within it the operation of unimpeded movements, is scarcely 
comparable as a prototype course of conduct to that of being an 
active moral and rational agent, a man. 

The third grand relation, Man's Relation to Things, Panthe- 
ism, Jouffroy expounds in the following manner. He first intimates 
in a general way that pantheism is the doctrine that the universe 
with its multitudinous forces and laws is God. He then passes on 
to a consideration of the philosophic system of Spinoza who is, 
broadly speaking, the chief pantheist in modern philosophy. But 
almost at the outset of his discussion of Spinoza, Jouffroy retrenches 
a bit in characteristically cautious fashion; he assures us the 
belief that the universe is God, and that God is the only universe 
Spinoza himself earnestly repels. The essence of God, according 
to Jouffroy in interpreting Spinoza, is existence, and His necessary 
desire is to remain existence. As an emanation from God, the 
human soul participates in the fundamental desire of God, and 
also aspires to a continuance of existence, as a created being. And, 
finally, Jouffroy tells us, in the course of his eclectic construction of 
pantheism, that nothing can be more proper, more consonant with 
reason, than the end to which our desire and passions tend. This 
end, somewhat as our end in relation to God, is the greatest degree 
1 Simeon Stylites — the Syrian ascetic (died 459 A. D.)- 



46 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

of real existence, the highest perfection of our being. All that we 
can do to attain this end is lawful and right, and the pursuit of it 
is virtue. Thus knowledge, existence, real being, perfection, 
virtue, happiness, are all the same thing under different aspects. 

The fourth grand relation, Man's Relation to his Fellow Beings, 
Humanism, our ingenious Eclectic breaks up, in his customary 
systematic way, into four sub-divisions, namely: (a) Skepticism, 
(6) Egoism, (c) Sentimentalism, and (d) Rationalism. We find 
these four sub-divisions of Humanism most clearly set forth in 
another one of W. H. Channing's translations under the title, 
"Critical Survey of Moral Systems." 1 

Skepticism, as one would naturally suppose, elicits little favor 
from Jouffroy. He regards this doubting system as offering a form 
of amusement to the man of talents, but as unworthy to divert the 
attention of the philosopher. Under his refutation of skepticism, 
however, he writes in a somewhat unusual and strictly psychological 
vein : " There is not, and cannot be, in human intelligence, any 
elementary notion which is not derived either from observation of 
what actually is, by the senses and consciousness, or from the 
conceptions of what must be, by the reason. And here an impor- 
tant remark should be made — reason never rises to the ideas which 
it is her function to introduce into human knowledge, unless the 
communications of observations first supply the occasion." We 
may discern in this terse sizing up of the situation an adroit attempt 
to reconcile the tenets of empiricism with those of idealism. 

The sanity with which Jouffroy lays before us the second sub- 
division of humanism, the main points of Hobbes' self-interest 
philosophy, and then, with a few masterly touches, punctures the 
heart of it, is interesting. " Hobbes declares that self-interest is 
the sole motive of human choice. He asserts that the end of every 
action is the pursuit of pleasure or the escape from pain. ... If 
I desire the possession of a certain object as necessary to my well- 
being, my neighbor may consider it necessary to his, and may look 
upon my act of taking possession as injurious to him. Hence 
inevitable contests, . . . What then," in the mind of Hobbes, 
" is the end of society ? The repression of the state of war." 
Then Jouffroy quietly and incisively tells us, in opposition to 
1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1840. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 

Hobbes' selfish system and with a view to silencing it : " If we 
never obeyed the tendencies of our nature, except from the con- 
siderations of the pleasure that will accompany their gratification, 
then would it be impossible that we should ever act at all. For, 
plainly, we should never know that the gratification of desires 
would procure us pleasure, except by having once experienced this 
pleasure." Amusing, too, is the superb way in which Jouffroy dis- 
poses of Bentham, an exponent along with Hobbes of the selfish 
system : "I honor the men who are called practical, and am per- 
fectly aware of their merits. . . . Practical men admit only those 
faculties in a man whose effects they can appreciate. They make 
much of a good stomach, of strong limbs, of the five natural 
senses. . . . But as to faculties more refined and elevated in na- 
ture, they either despise them, or deny their existence. . . . Ben- 
tham, gentlemen, belonged to this class that I have now de- 
scribed ; and he had all the energy and enterprise, all the sagacity 
and confidence, which characterizes practical men. . . . The 
fundamental hypothesis of the selfish system admitted and pro- 
fessed as it has been in similar terms by Epicurus, Helvetius, 
Hobbes, and all advocates of the system, without exception, could 
not be more clearly expressed. ... It might be said," Jouffroy 
concludes, " that the selfish motive does not even offer a reason 
for acting. . . . Shall I or shall I not act ? This is the practi- 
cal question to be settled. Self-love answers, act, because your 
nature demands it. That this may be a reason, it is necessary 
that it should express an evident truth; but so far is this from 
being evident, that reason at once demands its proof. If I am 
satisfied with the reply of self-love, I obey not a reason, but a nat- 
ural desire. As a matter of fact, then, the follower of interest acts 
not from reason, but from passion." And thus Jouffroy points out 
how in the attempt to explain and justify the selfish principle we 
escape from its control. 

Sentimentalism and rationalism are, according to Jouffroy, the 
two characteristics by which the systems professing to be disin- 
terested and the systems professing to be interested may be dis- 
tinguished and classified. He begins with an exposition and 
criticism of the philosophy of an advocate of the sentimental 
system, Smith the Scottish philosopher. 



48 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Justice is a duty, according to Jouffroy's way of construing Smith, 
the sentimental philosopher, because others have the right to 
compel us to observe it. " Whence comes their right ? From the 
fact that injustice would do them a positive wrong ! My only 
duty, then, is not to injure others; my only right is to prevent their 
injuring me. I violate duty whenever I do evil to a fellow-being; 
he violates my right whenever he does an evil to me." Jouffroy 
then asks, in plain terms, who would admit such propositions ? 
" Who would allow that they coincide with the true ideas of duty 
and right?" He refers here and there in his discussion of the 
sentimental system to Jacobi and German idealists, as well as to 
the Scottish School, and shows how France has had little to do with 
promoting this system: Condillac and Helvetius, anything but 
sentimentalists, represent the logical outcome of this sort of specu- 
lation in France. 

Jouffroy's words on Mackintosh, the English moralist, another 
sentimentalist, are also interesting. " Mackintosh believes in 
the reality of disinterested volitions, and denies that reason is 
capable either of assigning any end for conduct, or of exerting any 
influence over the will. . . . Moral conscience is a sensible princi- 
ple. . . . This principle is not primitive; it is created and de- 
veloped, as he thinks, gradually; or, to use his expression, it is 
a secondary formation." But reason, according to the sentimen- 
talists, is capable of deciding what is good or what is bad for man ; 
therefore moral distinctions cannot emanate from it, but must 
inevitably emanate from instinct. Jouffroy then avers in a media- 
torial fashion that — " Reason does not lead man in one direction, 
self-love in another, and instinct in a third; but, on the contrary, 
self-love, when enlightened, counsels us to pursue the very course 
to which instinctive desire impels, and reason, as the moral faculty, 
prescribes what self-love thus advises." 

Having examined in a general way the solutions of the moral 
problem as given by the skeptical, selfish, and sentimental schools, 
Jouffroy undertakes at last a review of the systems which seek the 
rule of human conduct where he himself believes it is most truly 
to be found — in the conceptions of reason. 

At an early day, Cudworth maintained rationalistic opinions in 
opposition to the system of Hobbes. Cudworth, says Jouffroy, 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 49 

taught that our ideas of good and of evil are not communicated 
either by sense or experience. Reason is the vital factor; it in- 
stantly conceives the ideas of good and of evil, from a contemplation 
of human actions, and as absolutely as it conceives the ideas of 
cause from that of events, or the idea of space from that of bodies. 
" Whence come these ideas which we find within us ? From the 
divine mind, which is their natural and eternal home, and from 
which human reason is an emanation." We recognize in this 
system the doctrine which Plato so admirably unfolded. The 
system of Price, Jouffroy next takes up and proceeds with like 
a master. " Ideas communicated by the intelligent faculty denote 
realities which are independent of ourselves, and which would 
exist if we were otherwise constituted, and even if we ceased to be. 
The ideas communicated by the sensitive faculties, on the other 
hand, denote only inward facts and sensations, which would not 
exist without us, and would change if we were changed." But, 
Jouffroy adds, intellect cannot explain certain ideas, because, in 
the first place, these ideas represent nothing which can be observed 
either within or without us; and, because, secondly, they repre- 
sent that which transcends the bounds of all observation, and of 
all generalization; in other words these ideas are absolute. "If 
we should analyze the truths which in any nation or time the 
common sense possesses we should find that they are composed 
of two elements : first, of a few innate articles of faith, which are 
in some sort the intellectual capital, received at birth as a gift from 
God to all men; and secondly, of numberless truths, which suc- 
cessively acquired by reflection through preceding generations 
have gradually become a part of this common stock." The in- 
tellect, then, appears under two forms, — first as a priori intel- 
lect, or intuitive reason, which conceives of an invisible that tran- 
scends all observation and all experience ; and second, as empirical 
intellect, or understanding, which sees in things such qualities as 
can be observed. According to Cudworth, Price, Dugald-Stewart, 
and other noted exponents of the rationalistic system, the idea of 
good is only an idea of a quality in actions recognized by intuitive 
reason. But Jouffroy says in his circumspect eclectic fashion, by 
way of concluding the discussion of the rational system, that moral 
good is not an intrinsic attribute of certain actions, as a round form 

4 



50 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

is of certain bodies, it is a relation existing between actions and 
an end, absolutely good in itself, to which these actions may or may 
not be directed, and by relation to which they are good when they 
tend toward it, and bad when they do not. 

Although throughout Jounroy's writings there is a tinge of melan- 
choly austerity, although he is patently a lover of orderly arrange- 
ment and logical sequence of ideas, the element of personal force 
now and then stands out distinctly in his utterances. In Toppan's 
translation of the lecture entitled, " On the Faculties of the Human 
Soul," x we note a ringing passage with elements quite akin to Tran- 
scendentalism : " Personal life," JoufTroy tells us, " is nothing but 
the fatiguing struggle of man or liberty, against the world or neces- 
sity ; and as the personal power cannot destroy the necessary cur- 
rent of external phenomena, nor prevent it from soliciting our 
faculties, it must do two things in order to govern them ; that is, 
restrain them when they wish to obey solicitations which address 
them, and fix them on the particular subject to which it attempts 
to apply them. . . . To combine all the energy of a capacity on 
a single point, to restrain it there for some length of time, — this is 
the effect of the action of the personal power on our faculties. 
Hence the prodigious efficiency of a strong will; hence the mira- 
cles of attention and the miracles of patience which have suggested 
the remark that genius itself is nothing but unwearied persever- 
ance." And then follows a passage, supplementing the personal 
power note, and illustrating the inexorable, common-sense ele- 
ment, with slightly optimistic flavor, never long absent from 
Jounroy's writings, — " To meet with obstacles is the charac- 
teristic of the human cond'tion. ... If happiness should come 
before merit, there would never be any possibility either of virtue 
or morality arising. . . . The present life is, therefore, pre- 
eminently good, because it is preeminently bad. Its excellence 
is in the evil it contains ; for the price of this evil is morality, is 
personality." 

JoufTroy resorts so often to such phraseology as firstly, secondly, 
thirdly, he employs so frequently such connectives as thus, there- 
fore, however, and what not, that — confronted so persistently with 
this formal technique — we may sometimes have good cause to 
1 W. H. Tinson, N. Y., 1862. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 51 

doubt whether such a rhetorician is at heart a Transcendentalist. 
Certain lines from one of Toppan's translations * ought to dispel 
at once from our minds any misgivings on this score. The ac- 
complishment of our end or of our good, and the accomplishment 
of the end or the good of other beings is, according to Jouffroy, 
our duty, the moral law. It arises " from a certain number of 
truths a priori, which, in making their appearance in our under- 
standing, illuminate the creation with a searchlight, reveal the 
meaning of it, solve the problem and unfold its law. Experience 
excites in us the manifestation of these truths, but it does not 
produce them; they exist a priori, and they are, therefore, uni- 
versal, absolute, necessarily conceived." The Transcendental 
note in these lines is in truth so obvious as to bear striking re- 
semblance to the tenor of Kant's thoughts concerning the 
categorical imperative. 

Jouffroy was, we know, an Eclectic. He seized here and there 
upon the quintessence of philosophy in philosophy and set it forth 
in fresh form in his own writings. Let us, then, conclude our ex- 
position of his Eclecticism with a few excerpts, of a noteworthy 
Transcendental trend, from his lectures in the various American 
translations : 

"By an irresistible tendency, thought arises from individual to social 
order, from social to human order, from human to universal order. Uni- 
versal order supposes a universal maker, of whom it is at once the thought 
and work. Human intelligence then ascends even to God, and there it 
finally rests, because there it finally discovers the source of that immense 
stream which the inflexible logic of principles governing it obliges it to 
ascend." 

"High as is my respect for the popular mind, I yet think this popular 
mind rather fitted to recognize truth than to discover it; of all the great 
truths which have influenced the destinies of the human race, I know not 
one which originated in the instinct of the mass; they have all been the 
discoveries of gifted individuals, and the fruit of the solitary meditations 
of thinking men." 

" Truth is order conceived, as beauty is order realized. In other words, 
absolute truth, the perfect truth, which we imagine in the Deity, and of 
which we only possess fragments in ourselves — is not, and cannot be, 

1 Theoretical Views. 



52 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

anything more than the eternal laws of that order which all things tend 
to fulfil, and all rational beings are bound voluntarily to advance." 

"Our capacities are ours, but are not ourselves; our nature is ours, 
but is not ourselves ; that alone is ourselves which takes possession of our 
nature and of our capacities, and which makes them ours; we are found 
entirely in the power which we have of mastering ourselves ; it is the action 
of this power which constitutes our personality." 

"There is no contradiction between faith and skepticism; for man 
believes by instinct and doubts by reason." 

Jouffroy did not seek in philosophy merely the origin and nature 
of ethical ideas and the nature in general of the human understand- 
ing. He made, as well, philosophical inquiries about God and his 
works, about the universe and its ends, about death and the here- 
after ; and he troubled his spirit a deal to arrive at right conclusions 
concerning these problems. Jouffroy manifests in the course of 
his investigations above all else two distinctive qualities, — fine- 
ness of observation and clearness of reasoning. And these two 
qualities enabled him, under all circumstances, broadly speaking, 
to analyse with acumen and infer with sureness. 

With his power of observation and proficiency in generalization, 
Jouffroy distinguishes carefully in man the spiritual from the vital 
principles which are the main objects of the two sciences — psy- 
chology and physiology. He shadows forth, too, quite distinctly 
the simple spiritual being in the midst of natural phenomena ; and 
then, by means of subtle analysis, proves reason to be the bond 
between the spiritual and material in man. The moral in the social 
order, according to Jouffroy, is simply the law of conduct in con- 
sonance with the ends of human nature and human reason. 

Jouffroy evinces in his make-up, from beginning to end, a deal 
of the artist and man of religion as well as the idealistic and ethical 
eclectic philosopher. He sees in the beautiful a religious phase of 
the good ; and he perceives in justice and sympathy a moral side. 
The truth, to him, is order in thought; the good is order in con- 
duct; the beautiful order in form. These religious and artistic 
conceptions he brings out especially happily in his "Cours de droit 
naturel" and in his doctrines "d'Esthetique." 

Jouffroy is not only a remarkable thinker, he is also a gracious 
and, at times, even a brilliant writer. He had, as his utterances 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 53 

plainly show, integrity of spirit, elevation of mind, fineness of feel- 
ing, analytical acumen. Although not particularly powerful as a 
philosophical lecturer and writer, he yet expresses himself with 
unusual distinction. There is in his utterances, indeed, a certain 
intangible modesty, sage reticence, delicate forthcoming of a noble 
soul, that invests what he says with a charm beyond and above 
what could be achieved by mere power. 

But Jouffroy, like his predecessor, Cousin, errs somewhat on 
the side of the superficial. He undertakes almost too wide a sur- 
vey in the province of philosophy; touches too generally only on 
the summits in systems of ethics; descends too infrequently to 
specific details. He undoubtedly had the genius for drawing up 
orderly expositions and effecting clever generalizations; but he 
had not the genius for organic and consistent synthesis. He not 
unseldom is swayed in one lecture toward idealism, and in another 
toward materialism, and always he manifests a slight bent toward 
an orthodox monism. 

It is evident that he vaguely respected the word science and en- 
joyed the exercise of pure reason; but the exercise of inexorable 
rationality concerning problems in philosophy was almost as alien 
to him as it was to Amiel. He appears to have been perpetually 
a prey to conscientious misgivings. 

Jouffroy, in short, seems always to have felt it more or less 
necessary to doubt, — to doubt the validity of psychological ethics 
apart from religious sensibility, and to doubt the validity of re- 
ligious sensibility apart from psychological ethics. He never, how- 
ever, in his chief utterances, departs widely from a discreet psy- 
chological standpoint. He is in certain respects in the field of 
philosophy, like his contemporary and colleague, Cousin, too much 
inclined to be a mediator, a moderator, an opportunist. He has 
the merits and the defects of the eclectic philosophers in particular 
and the system of nineteenth-century eclecticism in general 

4. Transcendentalism in French Dress 

In the course of the development of philosophy in France in the 
nineteenth century, at the time when the Transcendental philosophy 
of Kant and his followers was beginning to have vogue, one may 



54 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

almost invariably detect a note of order and a consecutiveness 
standing forth throughout the process of development. Rational- 
ism, more or less humanistic and utilitarian in nature, seems indeed 
to constitute from first to last — despite idealistic, Transcendental, 
or whatever other tendencies in the air — the keynote of French 
philosophy. This element of rationalism, at all events, appears 
to be conspicuously present in the idealistic philosophy in France 
of the early nineteenth century, — the eclectic philosophy of the 
Restoration Period. 

There are discernible, too, in the philosophy of France in the 
later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, two kinds of ration- 
alism ; they might be described respectively as naturalistic ration- 
alism and as ethical rationalism. The first order, more or less 
impractical, is embodied in the sentimental philosophy of Rousseau 
and his various disciples. The other order, savoring more of the 
normal and practical, is well set forth in the psychological philos- 
ophy of Royer-Collard and Maine de Biran. Both these orders 
tend to slide into one, blended with the Transcendental philosophy 
current in France at the time, in the compromise philosophy of 
the Eclectics — Cousin and Jouffroy. And the eclectic philosophy 
of Cousin and Jouffroy, under the influence of French civilization, 
appears gradually to slide off into the somewhat abnormal, 
socialistic, and utilitarian philosophy of the French philanthropist, 
Fourier. 

Philibert Damiron tells us in a characteristically orderly and 
consecutive French way, in his exposition of French philosophy, 1 
that there were in France during the first decennia of the nine- 
teenth century three schools, (1) the Sensualistic, (2) the Theo- 
logical, and (3) the Spiritualistic Schools. This intelligent classi- 
fication of Damiron is, in a general sense, skilfully adopted and 
developed by Paul Janet, a pupil of Cousin, in the essay entitled 
" Le Spiritualisme francais ou xix siecle." 2 

Janet declares, in brief, that philosophy in France at the end 
of the Revolution and at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
was entirely dominated by the Sensationalistic School of philosophy, 

1 Ph. Damiron, Essais sur l'histoire de la philosophic en France au XIX siecle, 
Paris, 1828. 

1 Q. v. Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 75, 1868, pp. 353-385. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 55 

the philosophy of Condillac; the physiological Condillacism was 
represented by Cabanis (1757-1808), and the ideological Condil- 
lacism was represented by De Tracy (1754-1836). Then there 
naturally set in a reaction against the Sensationalistic, or Sensual- 
istic, School. The reactionary faction is known as the Theological 
School: De Bonald (1754-1840), the first of the theologians, 
declared revelation to be the principle of all knowledge ; the Abbe 
de Lamennais (1782-1854) is notable as the chief advocate of 
theological skepticism in the nineteenth century; and Joseph de 
Maistre (1753-1821), dreamed of a vast religious renovation, and 
is reputed the founder of modern Ultramontanism. And, finally, 
there came into being, the Spiritualistic, or Psychological School, 
which was entirely independent of theology; sought in psy- 
chology the principles of ethics and theology; and incarnated, 
withal, in some measure, the modern Transcendental tendencies 
of Kant. 

The Psychological School, which we have already discussed at 
considerable length, was at first represented by Royer-Collard 
(1766-1824), and later by the French Eclectics, Victor Cousin, 
and his disciple, Theodore Jouffroy. But the idealistic psychologi- 
cal Eclecticism of Cousin and Jouffroy is simply an orderly and 
logical outcome of the philosophy in France immediately preceding. 
A careful analysis of nineteenth century French Eclecticism clearly 
shows, indeed, in greater or less degree, elements of the prior 
Sensualistic, Theological, and Spiritualistic Schools, — intermixed 
more or less with certain exotic elements of Scotch Idealism and 
German Transcendentalism. 

The organization of institutions of higher learning in France, in 
the early nineteenth century, opened for philosophers brilliant 
careers of letters and helped to accentuate the idealistic and ration- 
alistic tendencies in French philosophy. Among the most note- 
worthy of the men who held professorships of philosophy in the 
universities were the French Eclectics, Cousin and Jouffroy. In 
describing these two distinguished exponents of idealistic rational- 
ism in France in the nineteenth century, one writer says of Victor 
Cousin, " temperament imaginatif, passionnait l'histoire de la 
philosophic par de vives allusions que l'auditoire saissait au vol. 
II deroulait tous les systemes, et 1'infini, en belles phrases harmoni- 



56 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

euses et nobles, parfois elegamment nuageuses ; il inventait l'eclect- 
isine, et coulait doucement dans le pantheisme." And in describ- 
ing Jouffroy, the same writer tells us : " Jouffroy, disciple de 
Cousin, et tout le contraire de Cousin : grave, sobre, precis, interi- 
eur, contenant son emotion, detache du christianisme avec angoisse, 
et reconquerant douloureusement les grandes verites chretiennes 
par la philosophic, il recherchait, avec une sincerite et une reelle 
force de pensee, le probleme de la destinee humaine, ou posait les 
principes du droit naturel et de l'esthetique." * 

These lines describing Cousin and Jouffroy hint of another trait 
of French character which should be mentioned along with the 
national trait of rationalism, namely, amenity. The French 
race, in truth, is preeminently civilized, urbanized. Vivacity, 
graciousness, quickness of wit are proverbial among French men 
and women of letters. A style rhetorical and impassioned, based 
on the terra firma of good sense, and tending in spirit and content 
to adapt philosophy to the world rather than the world to phi- 
losophy, is quite generally characteristic of French philosophers. 
Transcendentalism in French dress, then, is to be found dis- 
tinguished not only by rationalism, but as well in no small degree 
by amenity. A few lines from the writings of Cousin bear for us 
on this score significant witness : " L'art qui recherche et discerne 
le vrai dans les differents systemes ; qui, sans dissimuler ses justes 
preferences pour quelques uns, au lieu de se complaire a condamner 
et a proscrire les autres a cause de leurs inevitables erreurs, s'ap- 
plique plutot, en les expliquant et en les justifiant, a leur faire une 
place legitime dans la grande cite de la philosophic, cet art eleve 
et delicat s'appelle l'eclectisme. II se compose d 'intelligence, 
d'equite, de bienveillance. II est la muse qui doit presider a une 
histoire vraiment philosophique de la philosophic, et c'est celle-la 
que nous invoquons." 2 

The decline in French philosophy of the first half of the nine- 
teenth century is marked by the wane of idealism, rationalism, 
and amenity. Rigorous and ethical and urbane idealism gradually 
tapers off into a crude order of utilitarianism. The eclectic phi- 
losophy of Cousin and Jouffroy, more or less ingrained with 

1 G. Lanson, Histoire de la Litterature francaise, Paris, 1898. 

2 Q. v. Cousin, Histoire generate de la philosophic, Ire lecon, 1829. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 57 

elements of Transcendentalism, winds up, in short, with the 
hedonistic socialism of Fourier. 

Francois Charles Marie Fourier (1772-1837), the notable French 
socialist and contemporary of the nineteenth century French Eclec- 
tics, was born, as was Jouffroy, in Franche-Comte. His father was 
an affluent draper, and the son received a somewhat liberal educa- 
tion at the college of his native town. On completing school 
education, he traveled for some time in France, Germany, and 
Holland. On the death of his father, he inherited considerable 
property which enabled him to live for a time in leisure ; but this 
inherited wealth was shortly swept away during the French Revolu- 
tion. Fourier then entered the army ; but after two years of service 
he was discharged on account of ill health. About this time he 
began to publish articles on European politics, attracting some 
little attention. In early middle life he entered a merchant's office 
in Lyons, and a few years later he undertook on his own responsi- 
bility a small business as broker. He obtained from these employ- 
ments just sufficient means and leisure to enable him to elaborate 
his works 1 on the reorganization of society. His theories of social 
reorganization, more or less characteristic of French genius, and 
more or less influential on the Transcendentalists of New England, 
are worthy of brief consideration. 

Fourierism, like the schemes of socialists in general, is the creed 
of a man who feels more strongly than he reasons. But Fourierism 
differs materially from other systems of socialism and communism. 
Civilization to-day, Fourier taught, is in a crude and infantile stage ; 
the poverty, crime, ignorance, misery, vice around us spring from 
unnatural restraints imposed by society on the gratification of 
desire. 2 It the desires or passions of men, their aptitudes and in- 
clinations, could be allowed freer scope, they would, Fourier argues, 
infallibly produce, instead of discord, harmony, — the highest 
condition and greatest happiness of which they are capable. 

Harmony, Fourier claims — from his peculiarly idealistic and 
decidedly socialistic viewpoint - — is to be found throughout the 
universe in its four great departments, — society, animal life, 

1 Theorie des Quatre Mouvements, Lyons, 1803; Traite d'association domes- 
tique agricole, Paris, 1822; Le nouveau monde industriel, Besancon, 1829; La 
fausse industrie morcelee, Paris, 1835. 2 Cf. Rousseau. 



58 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

organic life, and the material world. 1 God is the center of the har- 
mony and from Him all things flow. So, seeing and believing that 
all things from suns and planets to ants and atoms come from God 
and range themselves in orderly groups and series, according to 
certain fixed laws of attraction and repulsion, Fourier labored to 
set forth a scheme of human society that would be in conformity to 
these laws. 

Society, in Fourier's plan, is to be divided into departments or 
phalanges, each phalange numbering about sixteen hundred or 
eighteen hundred persons. Each phalange group inhabits a phal- 
anstere, or common building, and has a certain number of acres of 
soil allotted to it for cultivation ; and as adjuncts to the group life 
there are to be shops and studios, as well as farms, — all appliances, 
in short, of industry and art and as well various sources of educa- 
tion, amusement, pleasure. The property of the association is to 
be held in shares; and the apartments of the big central edifice, 
the phalanstere, are to be of various prices. The staple industry 
of the phalange is, of course, to be agriculture; and the menial 
work of the association is to be done by children who love dirt 
and are thus as it were naturally fitted for the office of scavengers. 
The institution of marriage is to be abolished and an ingeniously 
constructed regime of free love substituted. (It is best, however, 
to pass over in silence and neglect, as did the New-England Tran- 
scendentalists, the teachings of Fourier on the question of family 
life.) The twelve passions of the human soul, — the five sensitive : 
sense, hearing, taste, sight, touch; the four affective: friendship, 
love, ambition, paternity; and the three distributive: emulative, 
alternating, composite, — are to be given free scope. These 
Fourier deems to be the true motive forces of society. Emulation, 
in particular, the desire of success, honors, rewards, he believes 
should be relied on as the great stimulant to elicit exertion. When 
we come to the chapter on The Brook Farm Community of the 
New-England Transcendentalists a few other phases of Fourierism, 
not mentioned here, can be brought out. 

The objections to this somewhat crude and highfalutin order 
of socialism are, of course, patent. It appears to make — as did 

1 Cf. Plotinus's Emanatistic Pantheism. Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient 
Philosophy, N. Y., 1907. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 59 

the hedonistic philosophy of Epicurus — luxury, ambition, and 
sensual delights the end of existence. The theory of license in 
relations between the sexes if put into practice would be liable to 
lead to ruinous chaos. The whole creed from first to last leaves 
too much out of consideration the factors of wide-ranging individual 
initiative, wholesome human self-interest, and enlightened com- 
mon sense. 

The French socialistic philosopher Fourier we find, in short, was 
all through life of a very retiring and sensitive disposition. He 
appears, one cannot help thinking, to have mingled so little in 
society as to have remained in large part in ignorance of real human 
nature and of sane social arrangements; the strangeness of some 
of his acts and theories, indeed, almost warrants one in believing 
that there were in his make-up elements of insanity. His social- 
istic creed is not especially interesting or important in itself. It is, 
however, more or less significant for us as a vital phase — along 
with the Eclecticism of Cousin and Jouffroy — of the philosophy 
which was developed in France and transmitted to New England 
during the first half of the nineteenth century, and which helped 
to constitute here the source of some of the ideas of New-England 
Transcendentalism . 



III. RELATION OF NEW-ENGLAND TRAN- 

SCENDENTALISTS TO FRENCH 

PHILOSOPHERS 

1. George Ripley 

THE outburst of Transcendentalism in New England seems to 
have received inspiration in large measure from without — 
from Oriental and Occidental literature, particularly from the 
philosophy of the French Eclectics of the early nineteenth century 
— and partly from within — from certain phases of preceding 
American literature, such for instance as the writings of the philo- 
sophical clergyman, William Ellery Channing, and from the 
hearts and consciousness of the New-England Transcendentalists 
themselves. 

The Transcendental Movement in New England appears, more- 
over, to have nourished by a noteworthy coincidence almost simul- 
taneous with the Romantic Movement of Germany in the latter 
part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of which 
Goethe and Richte are significant figures; with the Romantic 
Movement of England in the latter part of the eighteenth and the 
early part of the nineteenth centuries of which Wordsworth and 
Coleridge are the principal exponents; and with the Romantic 
Movement of France in the early nineteenth century of which at 
first Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, and later in the realm 
of philosophy of the Restoration Period the French Eclectic 
philosophers, Cousin and Jouffroy, are noteworthy representa- 
tives. An indefinable something, like electricity, appears, indeed, 
to have been astir in the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere of 
New England, as well as in England, France, and Germany, about 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 61 

Transcendentalism in New England is commonly associated 
with the name of Emerson. He was, however, simply the finest 
and best fruit of the whole era. Other figures in the course 
of the movement, especially as regards the relation of French 
philosophers to New-England Transcendentalism, are quite as 
important as Emerson. 

The two great Unitarian clergymen in New England in the early 
nineteenth century, William Ellery Channing and Theodore 
Parker, men of wide learning and true inspiration, were — we 
must note in passing — distinctly instrumental from the beginning 
in setting afoot in our midst the Transcendental Movement. 
Channing, 1 for instance, gives among others as the sources of his 
inspiration such philosophers and men of letters as Swedenborg, 
Madame de Stael, Reid, Dugald-Stewart, Price, Goethe, Schleier- 
macher, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, and often definitely re- 
fers to Cousin's translation of "Plato" and "Introduction to Ethics" 
as well as to Jouffroy's writing in general. Parker, Channing's suc- 
cessor as chief Unitarian clergyman in New England, mentions, we 
find, in his "A Discourse on Religion," 2 his "Discourses on 
Theology," and his " Theism, Atheism, and Popular Theology," 
Cousin several times and the " Eclectic Philosophy of modern 
France " more than once, along with such familiar figures as 
Plato, Swedenborg, Bohme, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Reid, 
Stewart, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle. 

But the chief editors of The Dial, Ralph Waldo Emerson and 
Margaret Fuller, and the prime movers of the Brook Farm and 
Fruitlands experiments, George Ripley and Amos Bronson Alcott, 
should we believe be generally regarded nowadays as the leading 
lights of the Transcendental movement of the early nineteenth 
century in New England. Let us, then, undertake briefly a general 
survey of the lives and utterances of these figures with a view to 
getting an insight into the characteristics of their Transcendental 
writings and an inkling in general into the nature of their relation 
to the eclectic philosophers of the early nineteenth century in 
France — Cousin and Jouffroy. 

1 Cf. Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D., by Elizabeth Palmer 
Peabody, Roberts Bros., Boston, 1880. 

2 Cf. Works of Theodore Parker, Trubner & Co., London, 1876. 



62 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

George Ripley was undoubtedly one of the leading lights among the 
Transcendentalists of New England as regards love of philosophy 
and extent of learning. The two French philosophers, Cousin and 
Jouffroy, who exerted such marked influence on the idealists in 
New England in the early part of the nineteenth century, he 
translates himself and edits with elaborate introductory and 
critical notes in his magnum opus in fourteen volumes entitled 
" Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature." No New-England 
man of letters of the early nineteenth century is more Tran- 
scendental in spirit, evinces more scholarly devotion to the ad- 
vancement of philosophy, or shows more patently interest in the 
French Eclectics and admiration for them than this figure among 
the New-England Transcendentalists of whose life and writings 
we undertake first a brief review. 

Ripley, who may be aptly called the man of letters of the New- 
England Transcendental Movement, was born at Greenfield, 
Massachusetts, October 3, 1802. He graduated from Harvard 
College in 1823, and remained there a year or so after graduation 
as an instructor. On leaving College he turned to theology, and 
graduated in 1826 from the Cambridge Divinity School. There- 
after for five years, from 1826 to 1831, he was pastor of a Unitarian 
church in Boston. 

All through life he was ever busying himself with philosophical 
speculation and social reform. Gradually and inevitably he was 
drawn into the Transcendental circle; wrote on metaphysics and 
education; and lent his influence to promoting knowledge of 
\/ Continental Literature, — sojourning several years in Europe in 
order better to accomplish his purpose. 

Lie was, too, one of the prime movers of the Brook Farm 
socialistic experiment. And between 1840 and 1841 he was 
associated with Margaret Fuller and Emerson in conducting 
The Dial. He contributed articles to the Christian Examiner; 
was one of the editors of the Harbinger; and, in 1842, when 
the Brook Farm community broke up, he went to New York 
where he became literary editor of the New York Tribune, 
remaining such until his death. 

The most important piece of work in the province of literature, 
however, which Ripley undertook on his own initiative and com- 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 63 

pleted in the course of his lifetime, was that of editing the "Speci- 
mens of Foreign Standard Liter ature." It was published in parts 
by Hilliard, Gray and Company of Boston. Volumes I and II of 
the series, containing philosophical miscellanies from the French 
of Cousin and Jouffroy *— translated and edited with critical notes jL 
by George Ripley himself — were first printed in 1838. 1 The re- 
lation of Ripley to French philosophers centers chiefly about the 
translations of the French Eclectics, Cousin and Jouffroy, set forth 
in these volumes. 

As the frontispiece of volume I a selection is quoted from Milton's 
"History of Briton." It runs as follows: "As wine and oil are 
imported to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding, and many 
civil virtues, be imported into our minds from foreign writings; 
we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attempt of any 
great enterprise." We might, by a stretch of the imagination, 
infer that if George Ripley had in mind any " great enterprise " it 
was the dissemination throughout his country of the ideas of 
Transcendentalism, and that the introduction of the writings of 
foreign philosophers into our midst he intended as a means of assist- 
ing to carry out successfully his mission. 

His preface as editor of the volumes is interesting and illumina- 
ting. We set forth a few telling passages : " The design of issuing 
a series of translations from the works of several of the most cele- 
brated authors in the higher departments of modern German and 
French literature, has already been announced by the Editor of 
these volumes. . . . Among the writers, from whom it is pro- 
posed to give translations, are Cousin, Jouffroy, Guizot, and 
Benjamin Constant, in French; and Herder, Schiller, Goethe, 
Wieland, Lessing, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Richter, Novalis, 
Uhland, Korner, Holtz, Menzel, Schleiermacher ... in German." 
The catalogue of French and German writers cited, apprises us, 
in some measure, of the breadth of Ripley's erudition in French 
and German literature. It also adduces invaluable information 
for those in search of sources of inspiration of the New-England 
Transcendentalists . 

Of the fourteen volumes comprising George Ripley's "Speci- 
mens of Foreign Standard Literature," five are devoted to French 
1 Hilliard, Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 



64 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

writers, — one to Victor Cousin, two to Theodore Jouffroy, one to 
Benjamin Constant, and one to Guizot. Insomuch as the latter 
two, Constant and Guizot, rank in the realm of world literature 
rather as critics and historians than as idealistic philosophers, 
we have deemed it fitting to eliminate at the outset their writings 
from consideration. Three volumes with ear-marks of Transcen- 
dentalism remain then in the "Specimens of Foreign Standard 
Literature" devoted to the writings of French philosophers; and 
these three volumes, being the first published and among the most 
widely circulated, constitute a significant, although not large, element. 
Ripley selected from Cousin's philosophical writings for trans- 
lation and editing in the " Specimens of Foreign Standard Litera- 
ture " the following, 1 — " Preface to Tenneman's Manual," 
" Preface to Philosophical Fragments," and " Preface to New 
Philosophical Fragments " ; and he translated and edited from 
Jouffroy two pieces of writing, namely, — " Preface to Translation 
of Dugald-Stewart " and " Philosophical Miscellanies." He also 
secured the services of William H. Channing in the work of translat- 
ing and editing from the writings of Jouffroy the following, 2 — 
" Critical Survey of Moral Systems " and " Introduction to Ethics." 
It is interesting to recall here, by the w T ay, what we found to be in 
general the nature of the writings of Cousin and Jouffroy selected 
by Ripley and his associate Channing for translation and editing in 
the " Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature/' 

Ripley concludes the Editor's Preface to his magnum opus with 
a paragraph — coming from a Transcendentalist — remarkable for 
its catholicity of taste and scholarly discretion. He writes: N "As 
this work (" Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature "), if 
continued, will be composed of the contributions of different trans- 
lators, entirely independent of each other, it is proper here to state 
that it is devoted to the advocacy of no exclusive opinions ; that it is 
designed to include works and authors of the most opposite charac- 
ter, without favor or prejudice ; and that no individual is responsi- 
ble for any sentiment or expression that it may contain, which does 
not proceed from his own pen." 

1 Q. v. Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, Vol. I, Hilliard, Gray & 
Co., Boston, 1838. 

2 Q. v. Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, Vols. II and III, Hilliard 
Gray & Co., Boston, 1838. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 65 

The merits in general of George Ripley, one of the most active, 
earnest, and influential figures of New-England Transcendentalism, 
are worthy of at least cursory mention. He was a scholar, a linguist, 
a hard worker. He had a large library, good taste, was well versed 
in theology, philosophy, and literature. He became, in the natural 
course of events, one of the chief mediums through which the ideas 
and sentiments of the French and German Transcendentalists 
found their way into the life and literature of New England. 

Religious in sentiment Ripley was to the core of his being. His 
best-known writings remaining to us — the " Discourses on the 
Philosophy of Religion " — are, for the most part, concerned with 
earnest and able theological discussion and exposition. In them he 
manifests the optimism and idealism characteristic of the Tran- 
scendentalists of New England. The tone of these writings, 
indeed, is more than hopeful and idealistic : it is scrupulously 
conscientious, after the manner of Jouffroy. A deal of feeling is 
evinced; but it is, as was Jouffroy's, fairly well under the control 
of intellect. 

Pptimistically religious in sentiment, Ripley was naturally 
somewhat disposed toward philanthropy. He had, like the French 
Eclectics, Cousin and JoufTroy, an abiding faith in the intuitions 
of the soul, and the soul's assurance of the permanent possibility 
of increasing good. He would mitigate the sin and misery of the 
world; bridge the gulf between the affluent and the penurious; 
and spread more generally throughout the world enlightenment, 
prosperity, godliness. 

Of the Brook Farm socialistic experiment, established at West 
Roxbury, he was one of the prime leaders. He bravely renounced 
social success and conventional respectability; and generously 
surrendered himself to the sway of this idealistic scheme for the 
institution of a Utopia on the soil of Massachusetts. The principles 
of the French socialist, Charles Fourier, formed the basis — along 
with the idealistic and psychological philosophy of Cousin, Jouffroy, 
and others — upon which most of his visionary theories were 
built. We quote a significant passage from The Constitution of 
the Brook Farm Association of which George Ripley was such a 
prominent and potent factor, — 

" In order more effectually to promote the great purpose of 

5 



66 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

human culture ; to establish the external relations of life on a basis 
of wisdom and purity; to apply the principles of justice and love 
to our social organization in accordance with the laws of Divine 
Providence; to establish a system of brotherly cooperation for 
one of selfish competition ; to secure to our children and those who 
may be entrusted to our care the benefit of highest physical, in- 
tellectual, and moral education, which in the progress of knowledge 
the resources at our command will permit; to institute an attrac- 
tive, efficient, and productive system of industry; to prevent the 
exercise of worldly anxiety, by the competent supply of our neces- 
sary wants; to diminish the desire of excessive accumulation, by 
making the acquisition of individual property subservient to up- 
right and disinterested uses; to guarantee to each other forever 
the means of physical support, and of spiritual progress ; and thus 
to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement, 
and moral dignity, to our mode of life. ..." 

Such is the nature of a phase of purest and truest Transcendental- 
ism in New England. And it was largely owing to the tireless 
energy, indomitable will, and the unfaltering hopefulness of Ripley 
that the community, founded on this constitution having a some- 
what French hue, lasted the length of time that it did, — six 
years. 

Another significant passage from the writings of Ripley which 
combines idealism of a virile sort with faith in an inner light, all 
in the interests of social reform, is from the pages of The Har- 
binger, — the journal of the Brook Farm community. It runs as 
follows: 

" We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for ab- 
stract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce 
us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down- 
trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow-men. Every 
pulsation of our being vibrates in sympathy with the wrongs of 
the toiling millions; and every wise effort for the speedy enfran- 
chisement will find in us resolute and indomitable advocates. If 
any imagine from the literary tone of the preceding remarks that 
we are indifferent to the radical movement for the benefit of the 
masses which is the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, they 
will soon discover their egregious mistake. To that movement, 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 67 

consecrated by religious principle, sustained by an awful sense of 
justice, and cheered by the brightest hopes of future good; all 
our powers, talents, and attainments are devoted." 

The general tone of this manifesto seems somewhat deficient in 
amenity, — noble in purpose as it is. As we read it, we may be 
reminded of the character of Hollingsworth, drawn by Hawthorne 
in " The Blithedale Romance " ; and we can scarcely help thinking 
that there may be after all considerable resemblance between the 
iron-minded hero of that novel and the actual George Ripley. 

A leader and an organizer of men Ripley assuredly was. The 
preacher spirit, a common accompaniment of ruler ship, was, too, 
apparently strong in his make-up. He believed in the testimony 
of the soul above the external senses; was hopeful of a better 
state of things; and was inclined, in a practical way, to try to 
realize in every-day life the ideal. But it is plain, notwithstanding 
his divers merits, that he did not possess that fineness of fibre and 
delicacy of sentiment, that strength of thought and poise of mind, 
characteristic of his compeer — Emerson. 



2. Margaret Fuller 

Sarah Margaret Fuller, the contemporary of Ripley and Emerson, 
may well be called the critic of the Transcendental Era in New 
England. As the relationship of Ripley to the French philoso- 
phers — Cousin and Jouffroy — centers chiefly about his rendi- 
tions of their writings in the " Specimens of Foreign Standard 
Literature," so the relationship of Margaret Fuller to the French 
Eclectics resides principally in her editing of The Dial. Roth 
Margaret Fuller and Ripley were downright idealists ; were allied 
by bonds of sympathy and interests to the Transcendental 
movement in New England in all its phases; and were keenly 
alive to the importance of contemporary foreign literature of an 
idealistic trend, especially that of France and Germany, and 
were instrumental in getting it at least in part gathered together 
and set before the New-England public of their day. 

The various letters and essays of Margaret Fuller clearly evince 



68 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

her whole-souled allegiance to the idealistic movement which 
characterized the time and place in which she lived. She writes in 
one of her epistles : " Every noble scheme, every poetic manifesta- 
tion, prophesies to man his eventual destiny. And were not man 
ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would re- 
main torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that 
I sympathize with what is called the ' Transcendental Party,' 
and I feel their aim to be the true one." And later on she con- 
tinues somewhat plaintively yet in a quite level-headed vein : " My 
position as a woman, and the many private duties which have 
filled my life, have prevented my thinking deeply on several of 
the great subjects which these friends (the New-England Tran- 
scendentalists) have at heart." 

This remarkable woman of letters, the critic of the Transcen- 
dental Era in New England, was assuredly strenuously educated. 
She was the eldest child of Timothy Fuller, a hard-working lawyer 
and congressman of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts ; and at various 
times in her life the care of the younger brood devolved heavily on 
her. At the age of six she began Latin, and at the age of thirteen 
Greek, and she permanently impaired her health by this and other 
early application. On the death of her father, in 1835, she under- 
took the support of her younger brothers and sisters by public and 
private teaching. 

All through life she was distinguished by violent emotions and 
intellectual eccentricities. She was ever an ardent and conspicuous 
literary figure, associated in the realm of American letters with 
such men as Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Dr. Channing. 
In 1837 she became principal of a school in Providence, Rhode 
Island. In 1840 she assumed the editorship of the famous organ of 
New-England Transcendentalism, the quarterly magazine called 
The Dial. In 1844 she removed to New York, on invitation of 
Horace Greeley, and became there under him for a time literary 
critic of The Tribune. She was particularly interested in the Brook 
Farm experiment, at West Roxbury, and was a frequent guest 
there; although, like Emerson and Hawthorne, she never com- 
mitted herself to its enthusiastic vagaries. 

In middle life came the crisis of her career. It was at this time, 
about 1846, that she went to Europe where her eager personality 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 69 

led her into association, as it had in America, with various social, 
political, and literary leaders. And then at Rome, in 1847, she 
met and married Giovanni Angelo, Marquis d'Ossoli, by whom 
she had one child. In the Italian struggle for independence, which 
ensued shortly after ( her marriage, she took an active part, and 
served heroically during the French siege of Rome as directress 
in one of the hospitals. On the capture of the city she took refuge 
first in the mountains of Abruzzi, and then at Florence. In May, 
1850, she embarked with her husband and child at Leghorn for 
the United States. The vessel on which she sailed was wrecked 
in a gale off the shore of Fire Island just outside New York ; the 
child's body was found on the beach, but nothing was seen after- 
ward of the mother or the father. 

The Dial, 1 the famous organ of New-England Transcenden- 
talism, and for being editor of which Margaret Fuller is chiefly 
noted, grew out of conversations held at homes of Transcenden- 
talists in Boston and Concord. " Several talks among the Tran- 
scendentalists during the autumn of 1839," writes W. H. Channing, 
" turned upon the propriety of establishing an organ for the ex- 
pression of freer views than the conservative journals were ready 
to welcome. The result was the publication of The Dial, the first 
number of which appeared early in the summer of 1840, under 
the editorship of Margaret Fuller aided by R. W. Emerson and 
George Ripley." It was issued quarterly for four years, from July, 
1840, to April, 1844. Margaret Fuller and R. W. Emerson were 
editors-in-chief, and George Ripley, H. D. Thoreau, and James 
Munroe were assistant editors. Weeks, Jordon, and Company, 
121 Washington Street, Boston, and Wiley and Putnam, 67 Pater- 
noster Row, London, were the respective publishers. All its 
papers were unpaid contributions, the work of mutual aspiration 
and mutual admiration, — its regular contributors being its chief 
readers. Mr. Sanborn compiles the following list as the chief con- 
tributors to The Dial: " the Channings, Ellery and William 
Henry — nephews of the great preacher, the Sturgis sisters, Ellen 
and Caroline, Elizabeth Hoar, betrothed to Charles Emerson, 
Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, S. G. Ward, Freeman Clarke 

1 See article on The Dial, by George Willis Cooke, Journal of Speculative 
Philosophy, July, 1885. 



70 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

and his artist-sister, Allston's pupil, George Bradford, Theodore 
Parker, Elizabeth Peabody, Ednah Littlehale, Robert Bartlett 
and Marston Watson of Plymouth, and later James Lowell and 
George William Curtis — these and many more, older or younger, 
as years advanced, came into the circle." 1 

Of this Quarterly Journal, 2 issued in Janaury, April, July, and 
October, from July, 1840, to April, 1844, we have sixteen numbers. 
In these sixteen numbers we find no less than five distinct and 
significant references to the French philosophers whom we have 
under consideration. In the issue of July, 1840, we find an elabo- 
rate critical appreciation of William H. Channing's "Translation 
of Jouffroy "; in the issue of October, 1840, we find a book review 
of Professor James Walker's "Vindication of Philosophy," in which 
the name of Cousin figures conspicuously; in the edition of Oc- 
tober, 1841, there is a book review of George Ripley's "Specimens 
of Foreign Standard Literature," the first three or four volumes of 
which are devoted to translations of Cousin and Jouffroy; in the 
same edition, too, there are brief book notices of Cousin's "Cours 
d'Histoire de la Philosophie Morale" and his "(Euvres completes 
de Platon " ; and, finally, in the number of July, 1842, there is a long 
article on "Fourier and the Socialists." The matter in these just 
mentioned references is not especially worthy of re exposition ; it 
consists, for the most part, merely of cursory appreciations, flying 
comments, brief book-review notes. It is sufficient to indicate, 
however, on the part of the various New-England Transcenden- 
talists connected with the circulation of The Dial, definite ac- 
quaintance with the French Eclectics, Cousin and Jouffroy, and 
marked interest in their published works, both in the original and 
in translation. 

Margaret Fuller was the editor-in-chief of The Dial. An editor, 
we know, determines to a large extent the tone of a paper's col- 
umns. Let us then, with a view to getting at the sort of literature 
Margaret Fuller and her co-editors favored, examine the nature 
and tone of some of the more striking articles published in their 
periodical. 

1 See Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Frank Sanborn, Small, Maynard & Co., 
Boston, 1901. 

2 See The two- volume edition of The Died, collected and edited by the Harvard 
College Library. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 71 

An article entitled " Lecture on the Times " in the July, 1842, 
number of The Dial contains some significant passages : " The 
reason and influence of wealth, the aspect of philosophy and re- 
ligion, and the tendencies which have acquired the name of Tran- 
scendentalism in Old and New England ; the aspect of poetry, as 
the exponent and interpretation of these things; * the fuller de- 
velopment and freer play of character as a social and political 
agent ; — these and other related topics will in turn come to be con- 
sidered. . . . There is no place or institution so poor and withered, 
but if a new strong man could be born into it, he would imme- 
diately redeem and replace it. 2 ... As the granite comes to the 
surface, and towers into the highest mountains, and, if we dig 
down, we find it below the superficial strata, so in all the details 
of our domestic or civil life is hidden the elementary reality, which 
ever and anon comes to the surface, and forms the grand men, who 
are the leaders and examples, rather than the companions of the 
race. . . . For that reality let us stand : that let us serve, and for 
that speak. Only as that shines through them, are these times or 
any times worth consideration." The lines have, from the begin- 
ning to end, a Transcendental ring. They are pointedly akin, too, 
here and there in tone to passages in the writings of Cousin and 
Jouffroy. 

Another article in The Dial of October, 1842, entitled " The 
Conservative," breathes the essence of Transcendentalism. We 
cite from it the following telling lines : " There is always a certain 
meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain 
superiority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. . . . Conser- 
vatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; 
it is all memory. . . . Reform in its antagonism inclines to 
asinine resistance, to kick with its hoofs; it runs to egotism and 
bloated self-conceit. . . . (But) the boldness of the hope men 
entertain transcends all former experience. It calms and cheers 
them with the picture of a simple and equal life of truth and 
piety." 

1 Cf. Cousin: "The language of inspiration is poetry." Q. v. page 35. 

2 Cf. Jouffroy: "Of all the great truths which have influenced the destinies of 
the human race, I know not one which originated in the instinct of the mass ; they 
have all been the discoveries of gifted individuals, and the fruit of the solitary 
meditations of thinking men." Q. v. page 51. 



72 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

In an article in the July, 1841, issue of The Dial, entitled "Proph- 
ecy — Transcendentalism — Progress," we have Transcenden- 
talism from one point of view more or less bravely defined : " What 
is poetry, the poetic spirit, but the faculty of insight of the Good, 
the Beautiful, and the True, in the outward universe, and in the 
mysterious depths of the human spirit; that inward sense, which 
alone gives significance and relation to the objects of the material 
senses; by which man recognizes and believes in the Infinite and 
Absolute. . . . Transcendentalism is the recognition in man of the 
capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of obtaining a scientific 
knowledge of an order of existence transcending the reach of the 
senses, and of which we can have no sensible experience. . . . 
Lumps of ice, or a lump of ice and flint may be rubbed together a 
good while, before a spark is struck ; they will be lump of ice and 
flint still. . . . The senses, alone, can by no possibility arrive at 
the idea of cause, and are, therefore, impotent to furnish the first 
link in one of the chains of argument most relied on to demonstrate 
the reality of a First Cause. . . . Intuition is the only electric cur- 
rent that can evolve it. The idea of causation is a pure intellectual 
intuition." * 

Divers passages excerpted here and there from articles in The 
Dial bear, it may readily be seen, a general resemblance to certain 
of the utterances of Cousin and Jouffroy. We quote at random : 
" The mind makes laws for itself, and changes those laws when it 
pleases so to do." 2 " There is no soul which does not desire, 
think, and act ; in other words, there is no soul without sensibility, 
intelligence, and power." 3 " The most characteristic feature of 
modern thought is its subjectiveness." 4 

The French Eclectics now and then refer with evident familiarity 
to matter from Hindu and Pythagorean philosophy. We come 
across several columns in Margaret Fuller's periodical devoted 
wholly to quotations from these writings, viz., the " Laws of 

1 Cf. Cousin: "We do not commune with reflection, but with intuition," q. v. 
page 37. Also Jouffroy: "Man believes by instinct and doubts by reason," q. v. 
page 52. 

2 Q.v. The Dial, January, 1842, article of W. B. G. 

3 Q. v. Ibid. 

* Q.v. The Dial, April, 1844, anonymous article. Cf. Cousin on Fichte: "The 
one is no longer considered merely as the measure, but as the principal of all 
things." 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 73 

Menu," 1 the " Veeshnu Sarma," 2 and " Pythagorean Sayings." 3 
We find cited from the " Laws of Menu " the following somewhat 
noteworthy passages : " The soul is its own witness ; the soul itself 
is its own refuge : offend not thy conscience soul, the supreme 
internal witness of men." " All that depends on another gives 
pain ; all that depends upon himself gives pleasure ; let him know 
this to be in a few words the definition of pleasure and pain." 
" Whatever is hard to be traversed, whatever is hard to be ac- 
quired, whatever is hard to be visited, whatever is hard to be per- 
formed, all this may be accomplished by true devotion ; for the 
difficulty of devotion is the greatest of all." Two passages from 
the " Veeshnu Sarma " seem worthv of mention : " Fortune 
attendeth that lion amoDgst men who exerteth himself." " The 
mind of a good man does not alter when he is in distress; the 
waters of the ocean are not to be heated by a touch of straw." 
And, finally, as having in slight degree the ear-marks of Tran- 
scendentalism, we cite two or three passages from Jamblichus's 
" Life of Pythagoras," compiled by A. B. Alcott and published in 
the April, 1842, number of The Dial: " Wlien the wise man opens 
his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves to view, like 
the statues of a temple." " It is not death but a bad life that de- 
stroys soul." "The soul is illumined by the recollection of divinity." 4 
As a votary and disseminator of Transcendentalism in New 
England Margaret Fuller — editor of The Dial — is, like her 
contemporaries, unique. To be en rapport with the Infinite and 
Eternal, to have no limits set for the development of her powers, — 
these seem to be Transcendental stiings upon which she constantly 
harps. From the German and French philosophers of the later 
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in particular from the 
poet Goethe, she derived the fixed notion that the fundamental 
duty of a human being is the duty of self -improvement. The 
sermonizing spirit is not conspicuous in her writings : she was not 

1 Q. v. The Dial, July, 1843, quotations from Sir Wm. Jones translation, in 
The Dial. 

2 Q. v. Ibid, quotations from Charles Wilkins's translation. 

3 Q. v. Selections by A. B. Alcott in The Dial, April, 1842. 

4 Cf. Jouffroy: "Whence come these ideas which we find within us? From 
the divine mind, which is their natural home, and from which human reason is an 
emanation." 



74 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

distinctly a moralist. But the personal note of an earnest and 
aspiring woman of letters is assuredly much in evidence. 

The utterances of this unique feminine Transcendentalist indi- 
cate, however, indubitable evidences of acumen and breadth of 
outlook, — " Utopia it is impossible to build up. At least, my 
hopes for our race on this planet are more limited than those of 
most of my friends. I accept the limitations of human nature, 
and believe a wise acknowledgment of them one of the best con- 
ditions of progress." It is interesting to compare the element of 
common sense in this passage with the common sense for which 
our French philosophers are proverbially noted. Margaret Fuller, 
too, was above the jealous vigilance which would abolish classes. 
Humanity, she avers, longs for upper strata of society, and is bene- 
fited by them. The unrighteousness of class distinctions con- 
sisted, in her mind, in making them out of clothes, trinkets, man- 
ners, instead of out of genuine culture. " Man tells us," she adds 
in her febrile way but with considerable compass of comprehension, 
" his aspiration in God ; but in his demon he shows his depth of 
experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he 
worked his course up to the cheerful day." 

Weak-mindedness was not in truth a trait of this Minerva with 
Transcendental tendencies in the realm of New-England letters. 
Her intellectuality was apparently inveterate. Her religious devo- 
tion, such as she had, consisted for the most part in strong ad- 
miration for the mystery of life and its manifestations. One of 
her most significant utterances, evincing at once clearness of vision, 
naive frankness, and worthy idealism, is, it seems to us, the follow- 
ing, — "I am wanting in that intuitive tact and polish, which 
nature has bestowed upon some, but which I must acquire. And, 
on the other hand, my powers of intellect, although sufficient, I 
suppose, are not well disciplined. Yet all such hindrances may be 
overcome by an ardent spirit. If I fail, my consolation shall be 
found in active employment." For all of us it is hard to keep our 
heads cool. For a woman of Margaret Fuller's temperament and 
aspirations, philosophic equanimity and discretion were naturally 
doubly difficult. But she seems, nevertheless, to have attained in 
the course of her life and writings in no small measure to philosoph- 
ical strength. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 75 

Our survey of some phases of The Dial and certain of the writ- 
ings of this remarkable woman would scarcely be complete were 
we to omit giving attention to some of her characteristic oddities. 
" You walked into church," said Elizabeth Peabody to her, " as 
if you felt superior to everybody there." " Well, I did feel so," was 
the terse rejoinder. Her famous volume, " Women in the Nine- 
teenth Century," is opened with the following quotations : "'Frailty, 
thy name is woman,' " and " ' The earth waits for her queen ' " ; 
and the author continues : " The connection between these quo- 
tations may not be obvious, but it is strict. Yet would any con- 
tradict us, if we made them applicable to the other side, and began 
also: Frailty, thy name is Man. The Earth waits for its King." 
The touch, eminently feminine, strikes a contentious note which a 
greater mind would have avoided. The acute but delicate estimate 
which Emerson draws of her is significant : " In conversation 
Margaret seldom, except as a special grace, admitted others upon 
an equal ground with herself. She was exceedingly tender when 
she pleased to be, and most cherishing in her influence ; but to elicit 
this tenderness, it was necessary to submit first to her personality. 
When a person was overwhelmed by her, and answered not a word, 
except, * Margaret, be merciful to me, a sinner,' then her love and 
tenderness would come like a seraph's, and often an acknowledg- 
ment that she had been too harsh. . . . But her instinct was not 
humility, — that was always an afterthought." 

We are told in the " Laws of Menu" that " At no age ought a woman 
to be allowed to govern herself as she pleases." This seems, in 
view of the modern woman suffrage movement, a rigorously con- 
servative statement. But all through life Margaret Fuller stood 
forth almost too stanchly for her own and others' individualism 
and freedom. It is possible she might have been a wiser and 
happier woman, and her periodical, The Dial, had a wider and 
longer vogue, had she been somewhat less radically disposed. 



3. Amos Bronson Alcott 

Amos Bronson Alcott, noted for his " Orphic Sayings," does not 
manifest in any great degree the influence of the French Eclectics. 



76 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

In a passage in his "Days from a Diary" 1 he definitely alludes some- 
what disparagingly to " those French Eclectics." But this — so 
far as one is able by a cursory survey to discover — is the only ex- 
plicit reference in his writings to French philosophers of the early 
nineteenth century. 

Alcott, in fact, appears to be the only one of the New-England 
Transcendentalists, whom we have under consideration, who was 
impatient of the philosophy of the French Eclectics and antago- 
nistic toward their disposition to temporize, compromise, mediate. 
But this after all is not strange; for all through life Alcott was a 
thorough-going idealist, an out-and-out extremist, not likely to 
feel drawn toward a philosophy distinguished for moderation and 
half -measures. Alcott, too, was primarily a talker, a conversa- 
tionalist, an utter er of " oracles," rather than a deep student of 
philosophy and letters; and although he may have had no con- 
scious sympathy with Cousin, JoufTroy, or even Fourier, he indubit- 
ably voices some of these philosophers' ideas which were in the 
air in New England during his time. And, finally, his explicit 
disparaging allusion to the writings of the French Eclectics indi- 
cates, in itself, if not sympathy at least some measure of familiarity 
with them. 

As a contributor to The Dial, as the founder of the Fruitlands 
community, and as a reformer with the most sanguine Transcen- 
dental tendencies, Alcott stands enrolled as one of the chief figures 
of the Transcendental Movement in New England. Emerson, in 
a letter from Concord to an English friend, thus aptly characterizes 
our New-England oracle : " About this time, or perhaps a few 
weeks later, we shall send you a large piece of spiritual New 
England in the shape of A. Bronson Alcott, who is to sail for London 
about the 20th of April, and whom you must not fail to see, if you 
can compass it. A man who cannot write, but whose conversation 
is unrivalled in its way; such insight, such discernment of spirit, 
such pure intellectual play, such revolutionary impulses of thought. 
Whilst he speaks he has no peer, and yet, all men say, ' such par- 
tiality of view.' I, who hear the same charge always laid at my 
own gate, do not so readily feel that fault in my friend. But I en- 

1 Days from a Diary, A. B. Alcott. See The Dial, April, 1842. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 77 

treat you to see this man. Since Plato and Plotinus we have not 
had his like." 1 

This " large piece of spiritual New England," this self-appointed 
" oracle " of his time, was born at Wolcott, Connecticut, November 
20, 1799. He was of humble extraction, the son of a farmer, and 
his first experience of life was gained as a pedler in the South. 

About 1828 he became an educational reorganizer and estab- 
lished in Boston a school 2 which attracted much attention. His 
teaching was largely conversational; specimens of his socratic 
pedagogical talks are to be found in his "Conversation with Children 
on the Gospel," which appeared in 1836. Some of the ornaments 
which adorned the walls of his unique school in Masonic Temple, 
Boston, were: a head of Jesus, a bust of Plato, bust of Socrates, 
bust of Milton, and a picture of Dr. Channing. Emerson wrote 
in his Journal concerning the reform educator : " Alcott declares 
that a teacher is one who can assist the child in obeying his own 
mind, and who can remove all unfavorable circumstances. . . . 
He measures ages by leaders, and reckons history by Pythagoras, 
Plato, Jesus." But Alcott's methods, although commendably 
lofty, proved to be too impractical; his school fell out of favor; 
and so, abandoning it, he removed to Concord. 

During his stay at Concord, the storm-center of New-England 
Transcendentalism, he disseminated all sorts of Utopian views on 
theology, education, society, vegetarianism, and what not. He 
gave now and then lectures which won quite widespread attention 
by virtue of their benignity and originality. 

In 1842, however, our visionary departed for England. Re- 
turning a few months later with some English friends he endeavored 
to found a kind of phalanstery, called Fruitlands, near the village 
of Harvard in Massachusetts. The farm, located between Worces- 
ter and Nashua, some thirty miles from Boston, lay on a hillside 
gently sloping toward the Nashua River; it was a remote place, 
without a road, surrounded by a beautiful landscape of New- 
England woods and fields, an ideal sylvan spot for the realization 
of Utopian views. But the family, which never numbered more 

1 From a letter of Emerson to Stirling, Concord, April 1, 1842. 

2 Cf. Record of a School, by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, J. Munroe & Co. 
Boston, 1835. 



78 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

than twelve, did not hold together more than six months. The 
experiment, like the other Transcendental company — the Brook 
Farm Society, was an outgrowth of the psychical upheaval of the 
time, and especially of the French philosopher Fourier's ideal of 
co-operation in phalansteries. The spirit which animated the 
little colony is aptly set forth in the following passage from an 
article in The Dial of April, 1843 : " The inner nature of every 
member of the Family is at no time neglected. A constant leaning 
on the living spirit within the soul should consecrate every talent 
to holy uses, cherishing the widest charities. The choice Library * 
is accessible to all who are desirous of perusing these records 
of piety and wisdom. . . . Pledged to the spirit 2 alone, the 
founders can anticipate no hasty or numerous accession to their 
numbers. . . ." 

In addition to his distinction as master of a Pestalozzian school 
and founder of a Fourierian phalanstery, Alcott is noteworthy 
for his contributions to The Dial. In his articles for this organ we 
find set forth the acme of New-England idealism ; but it is idealism 
divorced from common sense and without the saving grace of humor. 
The series of papers under the title of "Days from a Diary," 
magniloquent in tone, unsystematic in thought, highfalutin in 
sentiment, constitute the most memorable of his Dial effusions. 

We might give as Alcott's favorite authors, Plato, Pythagoras, 
and Swedenborg ; and the names of the first two one comes across 
frequently in the pages of Cousin and Jouffroy. Emerson, of 
course, was Alcott's criterion among New-England colleagues. 
The way, indeed, in which he blends Emersonian optimism and 
idealism is particularly characteristic. We quote a significant pas- 
sage apropos of aspiration : " She (aspiration) would breathe life, 
organize light ; her hope is eternal ; a never-ending, still-beginning 
quest of the Godhead in her own bosom." It is interesting to 
compare with this passage some analogous lines from Cousin : 
" Inspiration is accompanied with that forcible emotion, which 
bears the soul away from its ordinary and subaltern state and dis- 
engages from it the sublime and godlike portion of its nature." 3 

1 Cf. The Biol, April, 1843, Catalogue of Books. 

2 Cf. Social Tendency, The Dial, July, 1843. 

3 Q. v. Cousin, page 35. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 79 

For his sermonizing spirit this somewhat elementary yet quite 
well-meaning philosopher of Concord is as remarkable as for any- 
thing. When he begins to preach he forthwith appears, as if by 
some occult right, in his natural element. The following specimens 
of his proficiency along the sermonizing line are superb enough to 
make the ordinary mind at least temporarily start and stare : 
"Step by step one climbs the pinnacles of existence; life itself 
is but the stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here 
with humanity, 'tis the aiming at divinity in ever-ascending circles 
of aspiring and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire dies. Our pur- 
suits are our prayers, our ideals our gods." 1 

Alcott, in short, appears to have been an innocent attitudinizer 
and moralizer. Without accurate scholarship or profound learning, 
he yet honestly endeavored, in his own high and simple way, to 
lead a life of self-culture and self-development. Emerson some- 
what unaccountably pronounced him a most extraordinary man, 
the highest genius of his time; and beyond doubt he was a pure 
and upright personality, of an idealistic Transcendental bent, who 
lived a more or less serene and benevolent life. 

His prime defect obviously lies in the fact that he did not pos- 
sess a sufficiently large bump of sanity. A little more study at first 
hand of the writings of the very French Eclectics whom he dis- 
parages, and sympathy with their clear and level-headed common 
sense, might have saved him from being, as he at times was, the 
butt of merriment. Such statements as these betray him, — 

" Identity halts in diversity." 
"The poles of things are integrated." 
"Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things." 
"Always are the divine Gemini intertwined." 



4. Ralph Waldo Emerson 

As time passes Emerson's utterances in the field of American 
literature, unlike those of his fellow Transcendentalists, tend to 
take higher and more enduring place. He was the finest flower 



Days from a Diary, April, 1842. 



80 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

of at least six generations of refined culture and pious living, a 
profound and independent lover of truth and beauty in philosophy 
and literature, the personal friend of such idealists as Wordsworth 
and Carlyle. He was, in short, a kind of felicitous blend of the 
Hebrew, the Greek, and the Yankee. He was not merely " the 
Poet and Seer " of the Transcendental Movement in New England 
of his time, he has become as well no small figure in world litera- 
ture. The Bible and Shakspere, Plato and Swedenborg, were his 
paragons. He was, withal, undoubtedly acquainted with the 
writings of the French Eclectics, and was one of the chief factors 
in effecting the efflorescence of Idealism, or Transcendentalism, 
here in America. 

We find several instances of Emerson's familiarity with the 
writings of the French philosophers with whom we are especially 
concerned. He was, in the first place, one of the assistant editors 
of The Dial — the chief organ of New-England Transcendental- 
ism — for two years, from 1840 to 1842, and was editor-in-chief 
of the paper, after the resignation of Margaret Fuller, from 1842 
to 1844. During his office as editor of The Dial there appeared 
on the pages of this periodical various references to the writings 
of French philosophers, 1 — three concerning Cousin, two con- 
cerning Jouffroy, and at least one concerning Fourier. In addi- 
tion to these instances from The Dial of Emerson's acquaintance 
with the writings of French philosophers, we come across in his 
essays in the Complete Works edition, published by Houghton, 
Mifflin and Company, several passages in the course of which — 
along with cursory references to such writings as those of the Veddas, 
and the Laws of Menu, of Heraclitus, Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinus, 
Marcus Aurelius, Swedenborg, Bohme, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Berke- 
ley, Cudworth, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Carlyle, and others — he 
makes several definite allusions to Cousin, Fourier, and others. 

Insomuch as these definite allusions to French philosophers have 
direct bearing on the subject at hand, we cite at random a few of 
them. In the essay entitled "Intellect " in the Essays, First Series, 
we find Emerson writing as follows : "A new doctrine seems at 
first a subversion of all our opinions, tastes, and manner of living. 
Such has Swedenborg, such has Kant, such has Coleridge, such 
1 Q. v. pages 70 and 71 in Chapter on Margaret Fuller. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 81 

has Hegel or his interpreter Cousin seemed to many young men in 
this County." x Again in the biographical sketch of his aunt, 
" Mary Moody Emerson," Emerson refers explicitly to Cousin in 
the following passage : " Her early reading was Milton, Young 
Akenside, Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, and always the 
Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, Stewart, Cole- 
ridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Madame De Stael," 2 . . . We 
happen here and there in the course of Emerson's writings upon 
manifold references to Fourier ; the citation of two of these ought 
to be sufficient. In " Life and Letters in New England," we note 
this passage : " Fourier, almost as wonderful an example of the 
mathematical mind of France as La Place or Napoleon, turned 
a truly vast arithmetic to the question of social misery." 3 And in 
" The Man of Letters " Emerson writes in a somewhat less com- 
plimentary strain : " A French prophet of our age, Fourier, pred- 
icated that one day, instead of by battles and Ecumenical Councils, 
the rival portions of humanity would dispute each other's excel- 
lence in the manufacture of little cakes." 4 Emerson naturally 
enough, makes now and then allusions to various French writers 
such as Madame De Stael, Benjamin Constant, G-uizot, and others, 
also to the French spirit in literature and social life ; but with these 
indefinite allusions hinting of French influence we are not par- 
ticularly concerned. Let us proceed, then, to a critical apprecia- 
tion of Emerson's writings themselves, and the element of the 
Transcendental in them. 

" Look into thy heart, and write," is the counsel of Sir Philip 
Sidney ; and Emerson seems happily to have followed this counsel 
all through his career of letters. He had, moreover, a pure and 
noble soul ; and when he looked into it, and wrote out of it, he said 
pure and noble things. His now more or less immortal essays are 
fairly crammed with thoughts of a rare order. There are so many, 
indeed, and they are of such variety, that it is difficult to determine 

1 Q. v. Intellect, Essays, First Series, page 320, H., M. & Co., Boston, 1895. 

2 Q. v. Mary Moody Emerson, Litarary and Biographical Sketches, page 376, 
H., M. & Co., Boston, 1895. 

3 Q. v. Life and Letters in New England, L. and B. S., page 327, H., M. & Co., 
Boston, 1895. 

4 Q. v. The Man of Letters, L. and B. S., page 235, H., M. & Co., Boston, 
1895. 



82 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

on those which are most significant. Like all great writers his 
genius goes, in its own way, almost the whole range of human 
thought and feeling. Like a true Transcendentalist that he is, 
too, his works bear unmistakable ear-marks of certain traits of 
Transcendentalism as indicated in the writings of his fellow New- 
England Transcendentalists and the contemporary French Eclec- 
tics ; they evince here and there, and often simultaneously, — opti- 
mistic note, breadth of outlook, faith in an inner light, self-reliance, 
idealism, and sanity. 

The optimistic note, in the utterance of Emerson, is apparently 
not only natural but irrepressible. Sincerely and instinctively he 
bursts forth, as do at times in a similar spirit both Cousin and 
Jouffroy, into such expressions as, — " What is excellent, as God 
lives is permanent." " There is no object so foul that intense light 
will not make it beautiful." " A divine person is the prophecy of 
the mind ; a friend is the hope of the heart." " All great men find 
eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties." " God is 
the All-fair: Truth and Goodness and Beauty are but different 
faces of the same All." And as a final instance of his optimistic 
spirit we cannot omit citing the following lines from his stanza 
apropos of character: 

''The sun set; but set not his hope; 
Stars rose; his faith was earlier up: 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye : 
And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of time." 

Although at times from particular viewpoints Emerson's thoughts 
may appear contradictory, they nevertheless possess as a whole 
unusual breadth, vitality, and integrity. Neither Cousin nor his 
disciple Jouffroy, standing for cosmopolitan eclecticism as they 
do, are more liberal or universal in compass of thought and feeling 
than Emerson. The following lines illustrate in a somewhat rich 
and poetic vein his breadth of outlook : " Poetry was all written 
before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we 
can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we can hear 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 83 

those primal warblings and attempt to write them down." * It is 
interesting and informing to compare with this passage those 
significant lines from Cousin : " The language of inspiration is 
poetry." 

Faith in an inner light goes hand in hand, in the make-up of 
this true Transcendentalist, with breadth of outlook. By faith in 
an inner light we are to understand simply faith in our own spon- 
taneous impulses, or revelations, as evidences of the Infinite and 
Eternal Life welling up in us and circulating through us. As 
Emerson, himself, puts it: " Like a bird which alights nowhere, 
but hops perpetually from bough to bough, is the Power which 
abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from 
this one, and for another moment from that one." 2 Further evi- 
dences of Emerson's faith in an inner light are to be found in such 
passages as : " Our spontaneous action is always best." " We 
love characters in proportion as they are impulsive and sponta- 
enous." 3 " It (character) is conceived of as a certain undemon- 
strable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man is 
guided but whose counsels he cannot impart." 4 And, finally, — 
" Out of yourself should come your theme, and only thus can your 
genius be your friend." 

Emerson, moreover, cannot be dissociated from such lines as, — 
"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string." But 
self-reliance in the sage of Concord is no silly vanity, no fatuous 
wilfulness ; it is just the natural and inevitable result of the man's 
greatness of heart and mind. His invariable self-reliance appears 
to spring, indeed, from a certain innate power and poise, from a 
certain native sweetness, soundness, and sanity of character. He 
was self-reliant because he could not be otherwise; and he was 
the outspoken advocate of it because he clearly realized that, kept 
within the bounds of moderation and social good sense, it is the 
only avenue open to all of us for the attainment on earth of happi- 

1 Q. v. The Poet. 

2 Q. v. Experience. 

3 Cf. Cousin: "Spontaneity is the genius of humanity, as philosophy is the 
genius of some men." 

4 With this cf . Jouffroy, page 51 : " (Our sense of duty arises) from a certain 
number of truths a priori, which, in making their appearance in our understanding, 
illuminate the creation with a searchlight, reveal the meaning of it, solve the prob- 
lem and unfold its law." 



84 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

ness. We cite a few passages, noteworthy for the spirit of self- 
reliance, which constitute a kind of keynote to his character and 
utterance : " Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." l " What 
your heart thinks great, is great: the soul's emphasis is always 
right." " Character is centrality, the impossibility of being dis- 
placed or overset." " We believe in ourselves as we do not believe 
in others." " The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd 
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." " Dis- 
content is want of self-reliance : it is infirmity of will." " Valor 
consists in the power of self -recovery, so that a man cannot have his 
flank turned, cannot be outgeneraled, but put him where you will, 
he stands." " Self- trust is the essence of heroism." And, as if to 
himself, he writes, — " Doubt not, O poet, but persist : Say 't is in 
me, and shall out ! " 2 

Ever living in an atmosphere of hope and confidence, of courage 
and charity, it is no wonder that Emerson is idealistic. His whole 
nature, pure and noble to the core, provided just the soil on which 
idealism is wont to flourish. Admiration and love inevitably follow 
in the wake of the idealistic concepts which he launches forth ; he 
tinges all that he saw with the rosy hue of his own soul. We quote 
the following two noteworthy passages as illustrative of his idealism : 
" Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which 
serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No God 
will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way, — 
Charles' Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules : every God will 
leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor 
and promote, — justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility." 3 
" Poets are liberating gods. . . . Those who are free throughout 
the world. ... I think nothing is of value in books excepting the 
transcendental and extraordinary." 4 

1 Cf. Hindu Literature, Laws of Menu: "All that depends on another gives 
pain; all that depends on himself gives pleasure; let him know this to be in few 
words the definition of pain and pleasure." Also cf. Milton, Paradise Lost: 
"The mind in its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 

2 Cf. Cousin, page 37: "Every man, if he knows himself, knows all the rest, 
nature and God at the same time with himself. ' ' 

3 Q. v. Civilization. 

4 Q. v. The Poet. Cf. also Jouffroy: " Whence come these (religious) ideas 
which we find within us ? From the divine mind, which is their natural and eternal 
home, and from which human reason is an emanation." 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 85 

It might shock our sense of the equilibrium of things to find that 
Emerson with all his patent merits should have no shortcomings. 
His temper of mind for a human being is a bit too cool and lofty. 
His feeling for shades and shadows in thought and sentiment is 
somewhat deficient. In dramatic power, too, in the sense for the 
pathetic and tragic in life, he has many peers. The defect of lack 
of common sense, of every-day sanity, however, assuredly cannot 
be laid at his door. Now and then in a passage he may startle us 
with some sublimated extravagance ; but, shortly, a line or so of 
sterling good sense clears the mist of unreality away. At times, 
indeed, one is puzzled to tell which ranks uppermost in Emerson's 
writings — as in those of Cousin and Jouffroy — literary genius or 
practical good sense. We quote several passages which speak for 
themselves : 

"In a good lord there must first be a good animal." 

" Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices." 
" The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and express- 
ing that lordship in his behavior; . . . the word denotes good-nature 
or benevolence; manhood first, and then gentleness." 

" A flint and a genius that will not strike fire are no better than wet 
junkwood." 

"A man is a golden impossibility. The line he must walk is a hair's 
breadth. The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool." 

"The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Poly crates, the awe of 
prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on 
itself tasks of noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings 
of the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man." 

"Human life is made up of two elements, power and form, and the 
proportion must be invariably kept if we would have it sweet and sound." 

Emerson, it is true, has not the systematic, constructive 
genius of a Plato, a Kant, or even of his contemporary French 
philosophers, — Cousin and Jouffroy; but he has, nevertheless, a 
certain nobility of thought and utterance, decidedly Transcendental 
in tone, which gains our admiration. He impresses us as being an 
endless seeker after more life and light without any past at his 
back. As a French critic, M. Rene de Poyen Belleisle, puts it, — 
" il est encore quelque chose de plus pour nous, et nous pouvons, 



S6 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

certes, lui appliquer la definition du philosophe que Thoreau 1 a 
faite : * To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, 
or even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according 
to its dictates a life of independence, simplicity, magnanimity, and 
trust.' " 



5. Brook Farm (Fourier) 

In the July, 1842, number of The Dial there is an anonymous 
article appertaining to Fourier. It calls attention to the increasing 
zeal and numbers of the disciples of Fourier in America and 
Europe, and acknowledges that their theories and projects are 
worthy of respectful attention. The article, too, remarks with 
some surprise on certain coincidences between the French Socialist 
Fourier and the Swedish Transcendentalist, Sweden borg. 
" Fourier," the writer informs us, " has skipped no fact but one, 
namely, Life. He treats man as a plastic thing, something that 
may be put up or down, ripened or retarded, moulded, polished, 
made into solid, or fluid, or gas, at the will of the leader." The 
writer, however, concludes his article in a more favorable vein 
with the following comment : " Yet in a. day of small, sour, and 
fierce schemes, one is admonished and cheered by a project 
(Fourier's scheme of Socialism) of such friendly aims, and of such 
bold and generous proportion." The social condition of mankind, 
according to the author of another article 2 in the same number of 
The Dial, needs to be vastly improved. A great genius, we are 
told, must arise, piercing the veil that shrouds in mystery the 
universe, and revealing to us the laws of order and harmony which 
govern creation. And that genius, says this second contributor 
to The Dial, has arisen and appeared before us in the form of the 
French Socialist and Idealist, — Fourier. 

These two articles in The Dial hint of the vogue of Fourier 
amongst the Transcendentalists of New England, and the es- 
teem in which he and his idealistic schemes were in some instances 

1 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the noteworthy poet-naturalist of New 
England, contemporary and disciple of Emerson. 

2 Means of Effecting a Final Reconciliation between Religion and Science, The 
Dial, July, 1842. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 87 

held. But Fourier's influence in America ripened into more con- 
crete fruit than mere critical review articles in The Dial; under 
the influence of his philosophy several socialistic communities were 
founded here in the States, — among which were the Brook Farm, 
the Fruitlands, the Hopedale, the Northampton, and the New 
Harmony communities. Of all these various socialistic com- 
munities the most successful, and for our purposes the most 
significant, was the Brook Farm community of West Roxbury, 
Massachusetts. 

The West Roxbury Association, or The Brook Farm Community, 
was organized by a select number of New-England men and 
women of Transcendental tendencies. They wished to form an 
ideal society — based on the Fourier scheme of phalansteries — 
on Puritan ground; they bought for the purpose a farm in West 
Roxbury, Massachusetts, of about two hundred acres; and took 
possession of the place sometime in April, 1841. George Ripley 
was elected president of the association; Charles Dana (later 
editor of The New York Tribune) was elected secretary; and 
William Allen acted as head farmer. Some members took shares 
in the community by paying money; others by giving labor. 
Work was distributed, in accordance with the theories of Fourier, 
by committees ; there were for members such various employments 
as shoemaking, dressmaking, farming, cooking, teaching. Some 
notable men and women, attracted by the beauty of location and 
the culture of the members, became boarders at the institution. 
George William Curtis of New York and his brother from Oxford, 
England, were charter members of the society. Theodore Parker, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne 
were frequent visitors. Margaret Fuller, by virtue of her genius in 
conversation and abundant sympathy, was one of the most frequent 
and welcome of the guests. Hawthorne's gentle yet aloof Puri- 
tanical genius fails, one cannot help thinking, to do justice both to 
the community itself, and to Margaret Fuller's relation with it, in 
his novel apropos of the society, entitled " The Blithedale 
Romance." * 

Emerson in characterizing the Brook Farm organization says: 
" It was a noble and generous movement in the projectors, to try 
1 Cf. Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H., M. & Co. 



88 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

an experiment of better living. They had the feeling that our ways 
of living were too conventional and expensive, not allowing each to 
do what he had a talent for, and not permitting men to combine 
cultivation of mind and heart with a reasonable amount of daily 
labor. At the same time, it was an attempt to lift others with 
themselves, and to share the advantages they should attain, with 
others now deprived of them." x 

And Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, another contemporary of the 
movement, in an article in the January, 1842, number of The Dial, 
describes and criticises in the following words the Fourier experi- 
ment at West Roxbury: " A few individuals reacting from social 
evils . . . have determined to become the Faculty of an Embryo 
University. . . . They have bought a farm, in order to make 
agriculture the basis of their life, it being the most direct and simple 
in relation to nature. . . . The plan of the community, as an 
Economy, is for all who have property to take stock and receive a 
fixed interest thereon. . . . All labor, whether bodily or in- 
tellectual, is to be paid at the same rate of wages ; on the principle, 
that as the labor becomes merely bodily, it is a greater sacrifice to 
the individual laborer, to give his time to it; because his time is 
desirable for the cultivation of the intellect, in exact proportion to 
ignorance. . . . Some say, . . . they (the Brook Farm people) are 
doubtless transcendentalists. But to mass a few protestants together 
and call them transcendentalists is popular cant. Transcendental- 
ism belongs to no sect of religion, and no social party." 2 

The society, like other idealistic communities attempted on a 
socialistic basis since the beginning of time, shortly after its organi- 
zation began to disintegrate. The " Perpetual Picnic," the 
" Eldorado of New England," the " Age of Reason in a Patty-pan," 
evinced even in its initial stages certain fatal weaknesses. The 
institution became a sort of whispering gallery ; the life in common 
was found to be too brassy and too boarding-house-like. The 
mothers finding in addition to other discomforts that the phalans- 
tery nursery — against human nature and good sense — deprived 
them of their children, gradually decided against the community. 
The strain on courtesy and good humor became, in general, too 

1 Cf. Life and Letters in New England. 

2 The Dial, January, 1842, article by E. P. P. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 89 

hard to bear; the irksome work. that had to be done, such as 
planting by the men, and washing by the women, was quite often 
selfishly shirked; the community had no authorized head except 
the president, George Ripley, who was inclined to be too rigorous in 
his theoretical ideals ; and each member being for the most part his 
own master and mistress, things sooner or later began to go at sixes 
and sevens. The bonds of common sympathy and interest became 
loosened ; members here and there on this or that pretext dribbled 
away ; and, finally, with the accidental burning to the ground of 
one of the chief buildings, the whole association went to pieces. 

When the Brook Farm Association broke up many sustained 
heavy pecuniary loss. And the whole affair from a financial point 
of view was a flat failure. Rut the idealistic socialistic experiment, 
on the French philosopher Fourier's plan, was not without some 
measure of success : a more intimate knowledge of human nature 
and the ways of the world was gained; the close association of 
members resulted in a general uplifting of the standard of culture ; 
and the outcome of each seeing the other's strength and weakness 
at close range was in the end a more charitable mutual understand- 
ing, and a more genuine mutual respect. The whole movement 
was simply a natural, almost inevitable, symptom of the time, the 
place, and the people. It was, in a small way, an essential step in 
the development of Transcendentalism in New England. 

Fourierism, the theories and principles upon which the Brook 
Farm experiment was based, appears, moreover, to be, characteris- 
tically French. The English socialistic tendencies, such as those of 
Robert Owen, 1 have a distinctly material basis; and although 
sentiment of a religious or sympathetic sort may be appended, it is 
usually added only as tasteful ornament. French social tendencies, 
however, such as those of Saint-Simon and his successor Fourier, 
tend to combine the material and the spiritual ; they compass and 
incorporate from the beginning manifold questions touching the 
feelings, sympathies, and ideals of human nature. It is quite 
patent, then, why the Fourier scheme of socialism appealed more 
to the Transcendentalists of New England than the Robert Owen 
or any other scheme of community life. 

The analogy between the socialism of the idealist Fourier and 
1 Robert Owen of Lanark came to New England about 1845. 



90 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

the mysticism of the idealist Swedenborg, both of which appealed 
strongly to the Transcendentalists of New England, is interesting. 
The general view upon which Fourier proceeds is this : there is in 
the Divine Mind a certain social order, to which man is destined, 
and which is discoverable by man. There are, according to 
Fourier, twelve fundamental passions in man, consisting, firstly, of 
the five senses ; and secondly, of the four social passions, — 
friendship, ambition, love, and the parental sentiment; and 
thirdly, of three intellectual powers, — Cabalism, Alternation, and 
Emulation, whatever these three may be. Swedenborg, in a some- 
what similar sublimated strain, declares that man's soul is made 
up of Loves, and every Love must find its Wisdom. Fourier would 
have the Love (Feminine) and Wisdom (Masculine) in human 
nature, as set forth by Swedenborg, or the twelve passions, as formu- 
lated by himself, find their proper development by the law of 
groups and series. If they do not, he argues, they become principles 
of disorder, and engender the world of wickedness and disorder 
that we see around us. 

The Brook Farm experiment, we understand, was instituted by 
certain New-England Transcendentalists in order to try to realize 
in tangible form the abstract ideals of two of their favorite Euro- 
pean philosophers, — the French Socialist, Charles Fourier, and 
the Swedish Mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. That the New-England 
idealists in due time found their American minds too fond of plain 
dealing to prosper under the somewhat eccentric regimes formu- 
lated by certain of their European preceptors, is not remarkable. 
The important issues of the experiment for us are that it was pro- 
jected by New-England Transcendentalists under the spell of a 
notable French idealist's influence, that it was instrumental in 
gathering together for several years into a cogent unit on Massa- 
chusetts soil a large number of New-England Transcendentalists, 
notable masters in art, music, and letters, 1 and that its failure as an 

1 Among the notable Minor Transcendentalists who were associated with The 
Brook Farm Community of West Roxbury, and who have not already in this dis- 
sertation been explicitly mentioned in connexion with the experiment, are : 

J. S. D wight, of Boston, Massachusetts, the musical editor of the Brook Farm 
periodical, entitled The Harbinger. 

J. F. Clarke, Unitarian minister of The Church of the Disciples, Boston, and 
author of various writings Transcendental in tone. 

W. H. Channing, graduate of Harvard, the pastor of a Unitarian Church of 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 91 

institution was effective in a most opportune way in establishing 
culture and wisdom in New England once and for all time on a 
broader and firmer basis. 

Boston, the joint-editor of The Harbinger, and a frequent contributor to The 
Dial. 

C. P. Cranch, graduate of the Divinity School at Cambridge, then a Unitarian 
clergyman, and finally a landscape painter and author. 

Jones Very, of Salem, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard, traveled abroad, 
was the personal friend of Clarke, Channing, and others, and became a poet of 
almost highfalutin tendencies. 

C. A. Bartol, of Freeport, Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College, and the 
Cambridge Divinity School; became pastor of West Church, Boston, and was 
early a member of the Transcendental Club. 



IV. CONCLUSION 

General Significance of French Influence on New- 
England Transcendentalism 

rTlHE office of bringing to a close this thesis on " French Phi- 
•*- losophers and New-England Transcendentalism " now faces 
us. In Part I, an attempt was made to define Transcendentalism, 
to sketch miscellaneous precursors of the movement, and to trace 
the beginnings of the philosophy in New England. In Part II, 
French expositors of the movement were taken up, the way in 
which the movement was in part transmitted into France was 
pointed out, Victor Cousin's and Theodore Jouffroy's exposition 
of the philosophy set forth, and a few words in general were added 
concerning the aspect of Transcendentalism in French dress. In 
Part III, the New-England phase of the phenomena was dealt 
with, especially George Ripley's, Margaret Fuller's, A. Bronson 
Alcott's, and R. W. Emerson's affirmation of Transcendentalism, 
and the relation which obviously exists in greater or less degree 
between what the New-England Transcendentalists thought and 
said and what was uttered by French exponents of the movement. 
And now, finally, in Part IV, it is in order for us to round off the 
dissertation by drawing up some general conclusions concerning 
the significance of French influence, such as it is, in its relation to 
the New-England movement. 

The similarity of the precursors of both the New-England 
Transcendentalists and the French philosophers is one of the facts 
which at once makes impression. Both the New-England Transcen- 
dentalists and the French philosophers, whom we have under con- 
sideration, frequently refer, as has been cursorily evinced, to such 
figures in the history of philosophy as the writers of the Vedas, as 
Plato, Pythagoras, Plotinus ; as Fichte, Kant, and Hegel. Elements 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 93 

of idealism, more or less Transcendental in nature, appear, indeed, 
to have flourished widespread and intermingled throughout ancient 
and modern philosophy; and New-England Transcendentalists 
derived impetus quite apparently not only from the writings of 
French philosophers, but as well from the same sources in ancient 
and modern philosophy as the French philosophers turned to for 
inspiration. 

French influence on New-England Transcendentalism was, then, 
it is evident, one among various more or less similar and correlated 
philosophical influences. In considering them, however, we find 
that the influence of French philosophy was not particularly pre- 
dominant. In comparing the number of times that such representa- 
tive New-England Transcendentalists as George Ripley, Amos 
Bronson Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson refer to such miscel- 
laneous philosophers as Menu, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, 
Pythagoras, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Boehme, Swedenborg, Berke- 
ley, Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
others, with the number of times they refer to the French philos- 
ophers, Cousin, JourTrey, and the socialist Fourier, we find 
that the number of times the French philosophers are mentioned 
appears in truth small. In the sixteen volumes of The Dial} for 
instance, the chief organ of New-England Transcendentalism, the 
French philosophers Cousin, JoufTroy, and Fourier are referred 
to only about fifteen times ; whereas Plato, the Greek philosopher, 
is mentioned over thirty times, and Fichte, the German idealist, is 
mentioned over twenty. In the " Specimens of Foreign Standard 
Literature," too, the editor, George Ripley, informs us in the 
Preface that " among the writers whom it is proposed to give 
translations are Cousin, JoufTroy, Guizot, and Benjamin Con- 
stant in French; and Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, Lessing, 
Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Richte, Novalis, Uhland, Korner, Voltz, 
Mentzel, Neander, Schleiermacher, De Wette, Olshausen, Ammor, 
Hase, and Twesen, in German." 2 Thus we see that the amount 
of attention devoted to French influence, Transcendental in nature, 
in the "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature" as well as in The 
Dial, is, in proportion even to German influence alone, slight. 

1 Published quarterly, 1840-1844. 

2 Q. v. Edition of 1838. 



94 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Somewhat disappointing, we must acknowledge, seems the 
slenderness of French influence. The eclectic philosophers Cousin 
and Jouffroy being in a measure the successors in France of the 
German Transcendentalists, their idealistic philosophy of the 
Restoration Period being admirably inclusive and pointed, and 
the French language itself in which they wrote being somewhat 
easier to comprehend by English speaking people than the Ger- 
man, one might naturally infer at first blush by exercising deduc- 
tive reasoning that French influence in the early nineteenth cen- 
tury on New-England Transcendentalism would be not less, but 
greater, than the German influence. The case, however, turns 
out to be quite otherwise. The greater surge, boldness, originality 
of the German idealists apparently appealed more strongly to the 
young idealistic philosophers of New England than did the more 
rational, urbane, compromise philosophy of the French Eclectics. 
Nobly valorous, wittily discursive, sanely sociable as they are, the 
French Eclectics, nevertheless, strike one as being more notable 
for manners and convention, for graces and accomplishments, 
for sophistication and cosmopolitanism than for anything highly 
flavored of the Transcendental ; yet the highly flavored Transcen- 
dental, such as is characteristic of the philosophy of the German 
idealists of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 
was just what the New-England idealists of the early nineteenth 
century experienced especial affinity for. The French philoso- 
phers, Cousin, Jouffroy, and the socialist Fourier, we have found, 
nevertheless, were well known to the Transcendentalists of New 
England; their writings were widely read in the original and in 
translation; and their influence on the New-England Transcen- 
dentalists, although not especially profound or extensive, is yet 
distinctly appreciable. 

The wide learning of the French philosophers, Cousin and 
Jouffroy, exerted, we must believe, considerable influence. The 
French Eclectics helped, in other words, to extend the intellectual 
horizon of the New-England Transcendentalists, were efficacious 
in familiarizing them with the names of world-great philosophers, 
and in acquainting them with the gist of world-great philosoph- 
ical systems. Cousin's comprehensive eclectic exposition of the 
history of philosophy and Jouffroy 's summary eclectic exposition 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 95 

of the history of ethics — both of which, we have seen, were fa- 
miliar through various editions in the original and in translation 
to the New-England Transcendentalists — are nothing short of 
masterly. " La philosophic," writes Cousin in his telling way, 
" dans tous les temps, roule sur les idees fondamen tales du vrai, 
du beau, et du bien. L'idee du vrai, philosophiquement developpee 
c'est la psychologie, la logique, la metaphysique ; l'idee du bien, 
c'est la morale privee et publique; l'idee du beau, c'est cette 
science qu'en Allemagne on appelle 1'esthetique, dont les details 
regardent la critique litteraire et la critique des arts, mais dont les 
principes generaux ont toujours occupe une place plus ou moins 
considerable dans les recherches et meme dans 1'enseignement des 
philosophes, depuis Platon et Aristote jusqu'a Hutcheson et 
Kant." x 

The rationality and urbanity for which the French are illus- 
trious, too, must have been, in some measure at least, communi- 
cated to the New-England Transcendentalists and been more or 
less appreciably influential among them. The reputation of 
French men of letters in general and of the French Eclectics of the 
nineteenth century in particular for rationality and urbanity is 
generally recognized. Comme il faut is the watchword of the 
French. To make no noise, to be serene, to avoid the crass and 
the brusque, to be adaptable to society and externals, are their 
characteristics. French genius, in short, strives to achieve finished 
form, gracious manners, polished periods; it tends to manifest 
in the realm of literature and philosophy the fruit and flowers of 
the thoughts and feelings of the human race rather than the more 
basic grain or trunk. The men-of-letters spirit incarnated by 
George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was, 
we confidently aver, attributable in no small measure to the in- 
fluence of the nineteenth century philosophers of the race of 
Madame de Stael, with whose writings these three New-Englanders 
were so patently familiar. It is interesting to note in this connec- 
tion, as we have already pointed out, that A. Bronson Alcott, 
the only one among the New-England Transcendentalists guilty 
in his utterances of a Carlylean Germanic excess, is the very one 

1 Le Vrai, le Beau, le Bien — Discourse d'ouverture, 1827. Cf . book review 
notes in The Died, October, 1842. 



96 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

among the New-England Transcendentalists least acquainted with 
the writings of the French Eclectics, and the only one who makes 
disparaging reference to them. 

The American mind and the French genius, one might say, fur- 
thermore, present in common on the whole the characteristic of 
common sense, " like that which Rose Flammock the weaver's 
daughter in Scott's romance commends in her father, as resem- 
bling a yardstick, which, whilst it measures dowlas and diaper, 
can equally measure tapestry and cloth of gold." * But the Ameri- 
can idealists of New England of the early nineteenth century 
certainly needed example and instruction in amenity and modera- 
tion. And in the writings of the French Eclectics of the Restora- 
tion Period the right sort of tutorage was found; for the New- 
England temper of the early nineteenth century inclining over- 
much to such extremest views as the occultism of Plotinus, the 
spiritualism of Swedenborg, and the ardent idealism of Fichte 
was happily counterbalanced and equalized, in large measure, 
by contact with the accurate and systematic mind, the spirit of 
compromise and opportunism of the urbane French philosophers 
of the Restoration Period. The philosophy of the New-England 
Transcendentalists, in brief, was in a considerable degree rational- 
ized and humanized by the instruction accorded by the French 
Eclectics. 

The element of idealism conspicuous both in the philosophy of 
the French Eclectics and in the philosophy of the New-England 
Transcendentalists is, too, in itself in a way significant. It helps 
to show that there was in Europe in the nineteenth century a wave 
of idealism in the air; it goes to prove that French philosophers 
were active participants of this general idealistic movement abroad 
in Germany, England, and America; and it incites us to discern, 
as it were, processes of transmutation and development, however 
obscure, in the idealistic or Transcendental movement in the 
realm of philosophy of the time. 

The French, we know, are noted for being more or less omnis- 
cient and versatile men of letters. They in the nineteenth century 
with their idealistic bent and their enterprising scholarly spirit 
reached out, appropriated, and re-edited the ethics and philosophy, 

1 Q. v. R. W. Emerson, The Superlative, in Literary and Biographical Sketches. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 97 

Transcendental in tone, of various other countries. The French 
Eclectics of the Restoration Period, in other words, were instru- 
mental in making France a kind of meeting ground of German, 
Scottish, and English idealism, — the idealism of Fichte and 
Kant, of Reid and Stewart, of Cud worth and Price. And the 
familiarity of the New-England idealists, as evinced in The 
Dial, the " Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature," and the 
writings of Ripley, Fuller, Alcott, Emerson, and others, with the 
writings of the, broadly speaking, omniscient and versatile French 
Eclectics, materially helped, indeed, to transplant Transcendental- 
ism from Europe in the nineteenth century and to establish it on 
New-England soil. 

The overlapping of literature with philosophy and of philosophy 
with literature is, moreover, a noteworthy trait in consonance with 
French genius. Cousin and Jouffroy occupied professorial chairs 
of literature as well as philosophy. Their philosophical writings 
have a literary flavor and their words on literature have a philo- 
sophical tone. Such, too, is distinctly the case with the writings 
of George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. Although these representative New-England 
Transcendentalists were philosophical in spirit, they, like the 
French Eclectics who were at once their predecessors and con- 
temporaries, are quite literary in style of expression and in 
many of their personal tastes. And the analogy between the 
French Eclectics and the New-England Transcendentalists, in 
regard to the dovetailing in their writings of literature and phi- 
losophy is, along with other features in common, more or less in- 
teresting and significant. 

A few observations concerning the mission of Transcendental- 
ism, as manifested in greater or less degree in the writings of 
the French Eclectics and in the writings of the New-England 
idealists, may be in order by way of conclusion. 

Poets, we are told, are liberating gods, 1 and what is said to be 
true of poets may be said to be true of Transcendentalists; for 

1 Q. v. Emerson, Essay, The Poet. Also cf. Cousin, page 35: "The char- 
acteristic of inspiration is enthusiasm ; it is accompanied with that forcible emotion, 

7 



98 FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS AND 

Transcendentalists, as regards point of view, are to be ranged 
among the poets of the world. They are like the good seed which 
falls on good ground. They affirm life hopefully and faithfully, 
and affirm it, too, more abundantly. 

The world in which we live here below is, as we all know, strange 
and precarious. Nature is cold and unfeeling, impartial and in- 
exorable. The sun shines and the rain falls on good and evil alike. 
Babylon and Ninevah have vanished from the earth like the snows 
of last winter. Vice and virtue appear to be products of peculiar 
conditions like vitriol and sugar. The pendulum of humanity's 
thought is continually swinging between altruism and egoism, 
idealism and materialism. Who among us stands on firm ground ? 
Upon what can any of us pin our faith? The Transcendentalist 
would rely upon the life of the Infinite and Eternal flowing through 
him more or less fully and freely, and upon the light of the Infinite 
and Eternal shining in him in the course of time more and more 
purely and brightly. We are not, according to his principles, 
finite creatures below on earth with an autocratic Jehovah in the 
heavens above, but are all a part of a divine Cosmic Whole. In 
the midst of which, in one form after another, through myriads 
of millenniums, and countless adverse experiences, human con- 
sciousness has been developing. The same wonderful impulses 
and instincts which guide the ant and the bee and the bird in 
their ways also constitute in us, on a higher plan, divine im- 
manence, and move us from age to age to greater wisdom and 
power, and deepen in us insight into truth and beauty. 1 

" The materialist," Emerson writes, " insists on facts, on his- 
tory, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man ; 
the idealist, on the power of thought and of will, on inspiration, 
on miracle, on individual culture. The idealist concedes all that 
the other affirms, and then asks for his grounds of assurance 
that things are as his senses represent them." And again Emerson 

which bears the soul away from its ordinary and subaltern state and disengages 
from it the sublime and godlike portion of its nature. The language of inspiration 
is poetry." 

1 Cf. Jouffroy, Facts of Man's Moral Nature: "Toward this good (the satis- 
faction of our entire nature) all passions of every kind aspire; and it is this good 
(God) which our nature is impelled with every unfolding faculty to seek." Q. v. 
page 44. 



NEW-ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM 99 

writes, giving us the key of the mission of Transcendentalism: 
" The positivists' appeal to the idealist to leave his idealism to 
strengthen the ranks of reform and regenerate society is irony's 
ne plus ultra. Its answer is Moses and the prophets; its answer 
is Christ and the Church ; its answer is Luther and Calvin and 
John Knox; its answer is Cromwell and Milton and Vane, Ply- 
mouth Rock and Bunker Hill ; its answer is Rousseau and Turgot, 
the voice of Fichte amidst Napoleon's drums, Cobden and the 
Corn-law Rhymes, Mazzini and Gladstone; its answer is Garri- 
son, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Scaffold of John 
Brown; its answer is the Transcendental movement in New 
England." x 

1 Cf. Cousin, Introduction a l'histoire de la philosophic, 10 lecon, 1828: "Ce 
qui est vrai d'un peuple est vrai de tous les autres d'une epoque et de toutes les 
epoques ; done l'histoire entiere est representee par les grands hommes. Donnez- 
moi la serie des grands hommes, tous les grands hommes connus, et je vous ferai 
l'histoire du genre humain." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Emerson, 1865. 

New Connecticut (Poem), 1881. 

Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction, 1830. 

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Bakewell, Charles M. 

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The Life of W. E. Channing, Boston, 1880. 



102 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Clarke, James Freeman. 

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Histoire generate de la philosophic, 1864. 
Translations: 

Preface to Tenneman's Manual. Trans, by G. Ripley, Boston, 1838. 

Preface to Philosophical Fragments. Trans, by G. Ripley, Boston, 1838. 

Preface to New Philosophical Fragments. Trans, by G. Ripley, Boston, 
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History of Moral Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century. Trans, by C. S. Henry, 
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Damison, Ph. 

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The Philosophy of the Beautiful. Trans, from Cousin, N. Y., 1849. 
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Emerson, Mary Moody, 

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q. v. The Dial, July, 1843. 

Faguet, Emile. 

Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvieme siecle, Paris, 1898. 
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Traite d'association domestique agricole, Paris, 1822. 

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Transcendentalism in New England, Boston, 1903. 






BIBLIOGRAPHY 103 

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Introduction to Ethics. Trans, by W. H. Channing, Boston, 1845. 

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History of French Literature, 1892. 
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Introduction to the History of Philosophy. Trans, from Cousin, Boston, 
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104 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Olle-Laprune, Leon. 

Theodore Jouffroy, Paris, 1899. 
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See Fuller, Sarah Margaret. 

Parker, Theodore. 

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Preface to Tenneman's Manual (C). 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 105 

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